
Class _X 
Book 



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Copyright N°, 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




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Material Sphere, 
mingling of thoughts 
and feelings which 
belong only to the 
human world 



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8u^' 


ITsT 


TTTO 


(Earth) 


Yaj (Veneration) 

Ui > 


Manava(Man) 


SPIRITUAL 
SPHERE 


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OD 





Irradiation of the Odic 
Fluid on the spheres of 
the Soul of man (blue) 
and of the fluidic astral 
body (red and violet) 



FIRST PRINCIPLES OF 
ESOTERISM 

A TEXT-BOOK 

FOR STUDENTS OF THE FIRST DEGREE 

OF 

THE ORIENTAL ESOTERIC SOCIETY 



IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
AND ELSEWHERE 



BY 



AGNES E. MARSLAND 



H 



THE ORIENTAL ESOTERIC PUBLISHING CO. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 






Copyright 1910 

BY 

Agnes E. Marsland 

All rights, including translation, reserved. 

Permission to copy or translate will be readily given 
upon application to the Author. 



j 

THE CARNAHAN PRESS 
WASHINGTON, D, C. 



©CI.A265174 



* 



<*- 

a 



^ 

4 

4 

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TO ALL CLIMBERS 

This Book is Dedicated by 

ONE WHO LOVES THE HEIGHTS 

"Celui qui veut monter le chemin 
doit se fatiguer" Babu. 



PREFACE 

IN issuing this text-book for the use of students of the 
Oriental Esoteric Society of the U. S. A., it may be 
advisable to say a few words on its general scope. 
My object has been to present in an orderly sequence the 
"First Principles" upon which a balanced and symmetri- 
cal knowledge of Occultism rests, and to point out the 
essential connection between this and a pure, true life. 

In order not to swell the work into an inconvenient 
size, many points that require further elucidation to the 
mind of the reader are but briefly touched upon, and 
may be too scantily treated. This can hardly be avoided 
as my object is to condense as much as possible, con- 
sistently with clearness ; and, besides, books can never 
explain as lucidly as the living teacher. In the com- 
monest art or science, the teacher or master is indispens- 
able, much more so with the greatest of all arts and 
sciences — the Art of Living and the Science of Wisdom 
or the Sacred Science. All readers of this book, there- 
fore, are invited to correspond with the teachers of the 
O. E. S. on practical questions and on individual and 
personal problems. 

I wish to express my thanks to all those who have 
helped me in the work and from whose writings I have 
quoted, directly or indirectly. My deepest gratitude h 
due to my revered Master, Dr. A. de Sarak, the Thibetan 
Adept who first opened my eyes to the truths of 
Esoterism, and from whose lessons I have quoted ex- 
tensively throughout the book. 

The instruction is graduated to meet the needs of those 
who have familiarized themselves with the ordinary 
Oriental teachings; it is in no way exhaustive but sug- 
gestive, and if it stimulates the ardor and inspires the 
will of the disciple to attempt greater and ever steeper 
heights, it will not have failed in its object. 

A. E. M. 



LIST OF CONTENTS 

Page 
Colored Frontispiece. . . .THE THREE WORLDS 

Diagram No. i, Constitution of Man 40 

Diagram No. 2, Odic fluid 49 

Diagram No. 3, Spiritual Intelligence 52 

Preface 5 

Introduction 13 

CHAPTER I. EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 

Esoterism in the early Christian Church 21 

Loss of the Inner Teachings 22 

Causes of agnosticism and atheism 22 

The Centers of Esoterism in the Orient 23 

The Chinese and Sanscrit languages, tangible 

demonstrations of past civilizations 24 

The Order of the Initiates of Thibet 25 

The New Era 27 

The three classes of aspirants to Initiation 29 

Ritual and discipline 29 

Methods of Development 30 

The "First Principle of Esoterism" 31 

CHAPTER II. GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 

Early conceptions of the Deity 32 

Is Religion the result of man's imagination? 33 

The Absolute, Parabrahm 34 

The Personal God 34 



Page 

God the Father 35 

How the birth of a new Religion takes place 35 

The Destiny of Man 35 

Unity, Fraternity and the one Great Brotherhood 37 

Brahma, Vishnu and Siva 38 

The Solar Logos 38 

The Supreme Breath 39 

CHAPTER III. THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 

Difficulties of the western investigator 41 

The three-fold nature of Life 42 

Body, Life and Will . 43 

The threefold body, the threefold life or the 

Soul, and the threefold Will or the Spirit 44 

Harmony between the teachings of the Orient 

and the Occident 44 

Location of the Principles in the human body . . 45 

The Sympathetic Ganglia 45 

The Magnetic Fluids 46 

Man's present status in evolution 48 

CHAPTER IV. PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC 
FLUID 

Occultism and the Constitution of Man 50 

The three Life-Principles . 51 

The Role of the Spleen in the organic functions 53 
Why is the Spleen the "graveyard for the red- 
blood corpuscle ?" 54 

The chief end and aim of the subconscious 

activities of man 55 

The Spleen — the Occult Organ 56 

The Odic Fluid and occult powers 56 



CHAPTER V. MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNI- 
VERSAL SCHEME 

Page 

An illustration by analogy 60 

The visible but a reflection of the real 64 

Character of the astral substance 65 

Dangers of experimenting in this field 66 

Astral world should be entered only for positive 

creation 66 

Creation on the three planes 67 

Clairvoyance and Clairaudience 69 

The Book of the Angel of Judgment 70 

CHAPTER VI. INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 

The dawn of the Solar System 71 

Ishwara 71 

The Three 72 

The Seven and the Twelve 72 

The Elder Brethren 72 

The Great Sacrifice 73 

The source of the Real Man 73 

Atman, Paranirvana, Parabrahm 74 

Illustration of the luminous ball showing the 

involution of the human soul 74 

Individuality and Personality 77 

Illustration of the snail showing the evolution 

of the human soul 77 

Persistence of the personality not immortality.. 79 

CHAPTER VII. REINCARNATION AND IM- 
MORTALITY 

Questions asked by the thoughtful man 80 

Reincarnation the only key to these problems . . 83 



Page 

This earth-life one of many expressions 84 

History of one cycle of the soul's experiences.. 85 

Conception 87 

Birth 88 

First, Second and Third Inflow of the Ego 89 

Responsibility for faults or diseases 91 

Heredity 91 

Desire, the law of the soul 91 

Reincarnation and the Life of a Day 94 

The Heaven- wo rid and Devakan 95 

The knowledge of past incarnations 96 

CHAPTER VIII. THE LAW OF KARMA 

The Law of Cause and Effect in Science 97 

The Law in Religion 97 

The oriental conception of God 99 

The God of Justice, Love and Mercy 100 

Infinite Patience 100 

Man's three-fold personal Karma 101 

The object of life — progress, not pleasure 102 

The use to be made of uncongenial people 103 

Karma, a law of minute detail 105 

Illustration of the weaver 106 

The tangle of cross-threads of personal ties 107 

The Karma of the community, the race, the 

planet 107 

Illustration of the growth of a city 108 

Every cause followed by its effect, nothing lost 109 

Karma as affected by motive 109 

Illustration of the alarm of fire no 

Escape from Karma 112 

The building of the immortality 113 



CHAPTER IX. METHODS OF INSTRUCTION 

Page 

The two paths 115 

Education versus instruction 116 

Freedom of student 117 

Pride, scepticism, argument, doubt and discus- 
sion are foes to spiritual advancement 118 

Humility of Lanu — favorable; criticism — un- 
favorable 118 

The Guru 119 

Work in our Centers 120 

Object of existence and methods of attainment. . 121 

Will, the first of Powers 121 

Two ways of living — synthetic and analytical . . 122 

Creation and synthesis 122 

Equilibrium and the Akasha 123 

Generation 123 

The mark of the Great Soul 124 

The power of poise 125 

The Doctrine of the Heart versus the Doctrine 

of the Eye 127 

Illustration of the Lighthouse 128 

Intellectualism and analysis versus synthesis 128 

Synthesis, concentration and creation 129 

Tests given by the Order in actual experience, 

not in writing or viva voce 130 

Esoterism the life of paradoxes 131 

Faults of body and faults of the mind 132 

Sacrifice, Silence and Service 135 

The Adeptate 138 



INTRODUCTION 

Picture to yourselves a high and rocky moun- 
tain whose lofty crown rises peak above peak 
cleaving the sky, while its foot is buried in ob- 
scurity. The upper part of this mountain is 
bathed in glorious sunshine, and it also radiates 
a light of its own, the sources of which are not 
at once apparent. The paths leading up to these 
heights are precipitous and almost inaccessible, 
nor can it be imagined from below that any 
climber could affront the dangers of the ascent; 
yet as we fix our gaze upon the most lofty height 
we see that this realm is peopled by glorious 
Beings, centers of life and energy, the Sources, 
as we now perceive, of that radiance we had ob- 
served. We know, by some inner sense of in- 
tuition, as we still gaze, that upon These Be- 
ings lies the burden of the evolution of humanity, 
and that if They still dwell upon earth albeit in 
these sublime heights, it is of Their own free- 
will, because They have chosen to remain in 
touch with humanity and to aid in its progress. 

From the base of the mountain, aeons and 
aeons ago, They started, as we see so many 
another start today, and outstripping the race, 

13 



14 INTRODUCTION 

They surmounted obstacle after obstacle, climbed 
from plane to plane, always serving, always will- 
ing to suffer, until we find Them substantially 
omniscient as far as the laws and conditions of 
our own solar system extend. One with the 
Universal Order, working in perfect harmony 
with the Ruler of the earth, Lords of Nature's 
hidden forces, these Great Souls give their all 
in the service of the human race. 

The sides of the mountain are threaded with 
paths and crowded with human beings. These 
paths are varied and meandering at the foot, and 
shrouded in darkness, but about a third of the 
way up the mountain the clouds of darkness roll 
back, and those who have reached this twilight 
are able, if they look upward, to catch a 
glimpse of that summit which is so bright over- 
head. Here there are many paths to choose 
between, some of them with more promise of 
pleasure and ease than others* and some men 
turn one way and some another, but we notice 
that so long as they keep their gaze steadily 
upon the light above they make progress. When, 
however, they have arrived into the zone of 
daylight, much discrimination is needed; for 
some paths, though apparently with an upward 



INTRODUCTION 1 5 

grade, soon begin to go downward and land 
the unfortunate traveler in swamps and morasses 
from which he has great difficulty in extricating 
himself. 

The zone of daylight is very wide and includes 
a great part of the whole mountain side. Here 
the paths run together so that they are less and 
less numerous and more obstructed the higher 
they lead, yet those who are treading them keep 
steadily onwards, and, as they approach the 
brightness of the summit, even before they come 
into the light, we see that they are aided from 
time to time by messengers from above, who 
take their hand when the step is too steep, who 
stand between them and the precipice when their 
nerve is ready to fail them at the dizzy height, 
and who guide the climber while always leav- 
ing him perfect freedom. And, as we look, 
we know that these climbers will surely arrive, 
for we see them already almost at the little 
portal which leads into the realm above; already 
their faces glow and their garments catch the 
light, and, aided by Those Who Know, their 
progress is sure if they Will. 

The summit of the mountain to which these 
aspiring souls are climbing is seen to be a center 



1 6 INTRODUCTION 

of great activity, an activity so harmonious and 
calm, however, that it has been described as a 
state of ecstatic contemplation. It is indeed 
difficult for us, amid the hurry and bustle of 
our own civilization to form any idea of this 
life of harmonious co-working with God and 
with the great Lord of our earth, nor can we 
have any conception of the calm of its intense 
activity. The shining ones who dwell there glow 
with a radiance which seems to be part of their 
own effulgence; they are the centers of energy 
from which the whole world is fed; and, as in 
a mighty army, each one both obeys and is 
obeyed in accordance with His powers and re- 
sponsibilities, for even here there are degrees of 
attainment. 

In the Agrouchada Parikai we read that the 
Initiates of Thibet are presided over by the 
Supreme Council, but regarding this body no- 
thing is given out save that it is the heart of the 
world and from it men receive their spiritual 
light and life, that it guards and protects, governs 
and feeds the human race. 

This illustration may serve to give symbol- 
ically an idea, however faint and unworthy, of 
the relations of the Great Masters and Initiates 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

to our earth and its humanity. In perfect know- 
ledge and perfect love the Initiates of the Great 
Brotherhood execute the commands of Infinite 
Wisdom and Compassion in serving the earth, 
and they express a ray of this light and energy 
through each one of our Centers in the world. 
The Oriental Esoteric Centers are, as it were, 
the outstretched hand of those Elder Brethren 
Who have already climbed the mountain ahead 
of us and Who beckon us ever onward and 
upward. They are Centers fed from above with 
that food which the great Masters deem ex- 
pedient, and it is their function in the world to 
give forth to others what they have received. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES OF 
ESOTERISM 

CHAPTER I. 

EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 

In all the great religions of the world there 
have been two classes or grades of instruction, 
the Exoteric, or outer, and the Esoteric, or 
inner — both true, both vital, but differently de- 
signed in order to meet the needs of the two 
grand divisions into which mankind naturally 
falls. There are those who crowd all the num- 
beiless steps of the ladder of material know- 
ledge, and those who already know all that the 
ordinary religion and science of the day can 
teach them and are in training for the Adeptate. 

To enter upon such training is to step out of 
the slow, semi-conscious evolution of the race, 
and to work consciously in harmony with law. 
Man does not reach heaven by a single bound, 
but he evolves, by orderly and slow degrees, for 
there is grade beyond grade of human advance- 
ment — each grade an evolution from that which 

19 



20 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

precedes it. The average civilization of the age 
and time takes him a certain distance without 
requiring from him much beyond obedience to 
a few clearly understood laws of ethics; then 
comes the stage when he feels the need of higher 
truth, of more complete understanding. From 
that moment it is possible for him to consciously 
hasten his development. If he chooses to go up 
higher, he must take upon himself new duties, 
master new fields of knowledge, submit to severe 
and rigid discipline, and bring to bear upon his 
task new faculties, latent, indeed, in all, but in 
the disciple emergent, definite, capable of being 
brought under conscious control. Thus he rises, 
step by step into those transcendent spheres of 
which it is written, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard," where dwells the purified soul of the 
Adept, the conscious co-worker with God. 

In the Orient these two classes, the exoteric 
and the esoteric, have always been well defined, 
and two recognized methods of teaching have 
existed, to meet their different needs. Exoter- 
ism is that teaching which can be given to the 
masses without danger of misunderstanding. It 
consists of a series of rules of life, grounded on 
profound scientific principles, but simply ex- 



EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 21 

pressed in terms suited to the state of the per- 
sons to be instructed, and calculated to prepare 
them for a knowledge of the inner doctrine. 
But the secrets of Esoterism and the ancient 
mysteries are only given to the one who has suc- 
cessfully met the outer tests and proved himself 
worthy of higher teachings; they are nowhere 
to be found in writing, nor are they even com- 
municated by word of mouth — they are the 
natural heritage of the awakened soul. 

When the Christian religion was founded it 
possessed both of these distinct schools whose 
standards were as far apart then as they are to- 
day — the teachings for the people, and those for 
the disciple. This is clearly shown in the Scrip- 
tures: when the Lord Issa — (the Esoteric name 
of the Lord Jesus) — was asked by the young 
lawyer the way to attain eternal life, He pointed 
first to the path of virtue and afterwards to the 
higher way of complete self-surrender. And 
there are repeated references to "the mysteries," 
the "hidden wisdom," the "oracles of God," the 
"mystery of the faith," showing that the early 
Christians were well aware of the existence of 
this inner school. 

Then came the Councils of Nicaea and of 



22 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

Constantinople (A. D. 325, and A. D. 381) by 
whose decrees the Early Church became trans- 
formed into Christianity, religion sinking into a 
religion, world-wide in its influence for good, 
indeed, but exoteric, and lacking all the more 
definite precepts of Esoterism. 

Thus the secret teachings faded into a memory 
and were forgotten so far as the Western World 
was concerned; the Mysteries became mysteries 
indeed, unknown and almost incomprehensible to 
the modern Christian. 

Therefore we have today the anomalous spec- 
tacle of the good man, already morally and in- 
tellectually balanced, spiritually minded, ready for 
a reasonable faith, who, finding no one to point 
him the way, lapses into agnosticism, atheism or 
indifference. The agnostic is often a high- 
minded man, loving truth and justice, who in- 
sists on looking with his own eyes and refuses 
to do his thinking by custom and convention — a 
fact which proves him already somewhat in ad- 
vance of his race and ready to step higher. But 
the religion of the day offers him no reasonable 
or logical faith; when he would believe, he can- 
not, and the legitimate cravings of his soul re- 



EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 23 

main unsatisfied. He needs higher, fuller teach- 
ing. Where is he to find it? 

In the Orient this inevitable stage of growth 
is foreseen and provided for. There, after a man 
has successfully met all the problems and ex- 
periences of the outer life, has been trained and 
disciplined in the Universities, in business and 
in the domestic relations — he still recognizes 
that he has but learned his lesson on the lowest 
plane, the physical. Then he prepares in earnest 
to devote himself to the Higher Life, so that he 
may, some day, be held worthy to be received into 
one of the Great Centers of Learning in which are 
taught the truths of the Ancient Wisdom. 

For there is, in truth, an actual organized body 
of living Teachers, having in Their charge the 
keeping of the Sacred Science. Now they live 
secluded, owing to the hostile attitude which, for 
many centuries, mankind has shown; but once 
the whole world knew and honored the Religion 
of the Initiates. No man rose so high in the 
state, in philosophy, science, or generalship that 
to be admitted to the knowledge of the Mys- 
teries was not considered a greater honor than 
any the world could bestow. Now the Mys- 
teries have ceased to be openly celebrated, but 



24 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

the great centers, from which they originally 
sprang, still exist, as they have existed from 
untold ages, in the hidden fastnesses and plateaux 
of the Himalayas of Thibet and India, as well as 
in Central China, Chaldaea and Egypt. 

From these centers, age after age, as the world 
needed guidance, leaders have been sent forth. 
As far back as the records of our race can carry 
us, we catch glimpses of great beings, law-givers, 
philosophers, sages, magi, kings and priests, all 
of whom, if we may trust the general outline of 
history, were in possession of powers and of 
knowledge which have since become lost tem- 
porarily to all but the few — who know. 

When we consider the languages of these 
ancient civilizations, notably the Chinese and the 
Sanscrit, we find them monuments of intellectual 
and spiritual expression. Rich in imagery, yet 
capable of clear-cut and concise statements in the 
field of science and intellect, they are evidently 
the product of highly-evolved beings; for those 
who could have needed such wealth of language 
to express their thoughts must have been men of 
great ideas and powers. The Sanscrit language, 
now dead to civilisation and spoken only by Those 
Who made it what it is, may serve us as a link, 



EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 25 

carrying back our thought in a tangible way to 
these ancient times and aiding us to conceive 
the theory of the universe which Esoterism 
teaches. This ancient language opens a store- 
house of spiritual truth — it is the natural out- 
pouring of a people who were already far beyond 
us, as we stand today, spiritually, intellectually, 
and scientifically. 

In its records we read that many hundreds of 
centuries ago the ancient sages, those great souls 
who consecrated their entire lives, generation 
after generation, to the investigation of the laws 
of the universe, resided in the Orient, in the 
heights of the Himalayas. Working alone in 
the silence they transmitted the knowledge which 
they acquired to trusted disciples only, who, 
starting from the data supplied by these great 
Masters, made many more discoveries and trans- 
mitted them in turn; so that, today, the body 
of Initiates is in possession of knowledge which 
the generality of men would be incapable of 
suspecting, and whose results, if they should be 
suddenly revealed (even a few of them), would 
appear to material scientists as miraculous and 
even as impossible of belief. Nor has this know- 
ledge been acquired by imagination or by intui- 



26 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

tion alone, but by experiments which can be re- 
peated and verified by those who are willing to 
submit to the necessary conditions. 

In this aspect, certainly, the Sacred Science 
deserves the respectful consideration of all men 
of science. Its transcendent truths come to us 
with authority derived from their own nature, 
and emphasized by their hoary antiquity; never- 
theless they do not rest their claim upon authority. 
They make that strong appeal to individual cred- 
ence which is made by the truths of chemistry 
and physics — namely, that what one man an- 
nounces as truth can be verified by another in 
actual experiment. And this method, super- 
ficially supposed to be the discovery of modern 
science, has been employed by the Initiates now 
for many centuries, so that the verification of 
each truth has been repeated hundreds — nay, 
many thousands of times. 

The fact noted above that the experimenter 
must submit to the conditions imposed ought not 
to excite surprise. In chemical experiments dur- 
ing which poisonous gases may be released, or 
in experiments with explosives, the teacher who 
should not impose conditions to secure the safety 



EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 2.J 

of his pupils would be accounted criminally negli- 
gent. The tests required of the student of the 
Occult Sciences are of precisely this nature. The 
forces to be investigated are so stupendous that 
only those who have developed themselves 
spiritually beyond the thrall of envy, jealousy, 
hatred and kindred passions can control them 
""-^without widespread devastation. Not to the first- 
comer will the Veil of Isis be at once lifted ; many 
and arduous are the tests, almost insurmountable 
the obstacles, next to impossible the conditions 
over which the aspirant is required to triumph, 
and many years of ardent endeavor may be the 
price which he has to pay for the solution of 
even the simplest of Nature's riddles. But never 
has an earnest disciple been turned away ; to him 
who knocks the door shall be opened, and to him 
who asks it shall be given. 

For many centuries, few have knocked at these 
ancient portals, for the mind of the world has 
been bent on wars, conquest and the lust of 
wealth; men have lived in the indulgence of the 
desires of the flesh and the defence of the physical 
being. Now, however, with the New Era, is com- 
ing about a new order of things; the soul is 
weary of strife and useless toil and again men 



28 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

are knocking and asking as of old for the light 
of truth. 

And in answer to this growing demand, feeble 
though it is at present, the Great Masters of 
Esoterism have sent out once again from Their 
midst, envoys, teachers with powers to establish 
schools and Centers of Instruction in all coun- 
tries where the cry is heard, so that the hungry 
may be fed and the aspiring soul may be brought 
in touch with the Divine Mysteries. 

There are in general three fairly distinct stages 
of interest shown in those students who approach 
our Centers of Initiation: 

First, there are those whose intellectual curi- 
osity has been aroused in some one of the usual 
ways and who desire to learn more about those 
scientific points which the Order professes to be 
willing to elucidate. Or they have had experi- 
ences of a psychic nature, phenomena which the 
science of the day does not attempt to explain. 
These persons will be satisfied, to a great ex- 
tent, by books and scientific investigations and 
teachings — their interest being for the most part 
in outer manifestations. 

Second, there are those who desire personal de- 
velopment. Suffering or perhaps disaster has 



EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 29 

driven the soul in upon itself, and it craves a 
solution of life's inequalities; it would know the 
reason of the disappointments and the dark side 
of life and learn how best to bear its suffering 
with courage and equanimity. For these, and 
for all who are seeking something for themselves 
there are inner teachings which will guide the soul 
into the higher path, weaning him gradually away 
from the thought of selfish attainment to that of 
service, so that he may be prepared to receive 
those greater truths which are given to Active 
Members of the Order. 

And third, there are those who seek the bond 
of Union, Love and Peace, to unite themselves 
with all those who are working together for the 
good of humanity, standing shoulder to shoulder 
for the uplifting of the race; giving without 
stint of their time, of their means, and of them- 
selves for the good of all. 

To these the Order gives special exercises, a 
Ritual, and discipline, so that they may attain 
that spiritual and psychic advancement which can 
only be undertaken safely by those who work 
fraternally, with order and method, having shown 
in frequent tests the purity and unselfishness of 
their motives. Men who are thus systematically 



30 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

trained attain to a Clear Vision in the imma- 
terial, spiritual world, their inner faculties of 
sight and hearing become exceedingly sensitive 
and acute, and they perceive spiritual truths as 
readily as their physical senses perceive the 
objects of the world, or as their intellect grasps 
the climax of a train of reasoning. 

Esoterism, then, begins where Exoterism ends : 
it takes the "good man" by the hand, after he 
has learned all that the sectarian religions of the 
day can teach him, and bids him climb yet higher. 
Those far-off vistas which his faith but vaguely 
senses, it declares true; his hopes and spiritual 
aspirations it bids him realize; it presents him 
with a new science in religion, as well as re- 
ligion in all true science ; it teaches him, step by ^ 
step, as he is able to learn, the mysteries of the 
nature of God and the laws of the Universe; it 
offers him a vast field of scientific research after 
he shall have developed within himself the powers 
necessary to experiment in safety; it bids him 
relinquish the ratiocination of intellectual attain- 
ment for wisdom, and it promises him the aid 
of Those Who Know in the realization of all his 
aspirations — in short, it teaches him to round out 
all the phases of his being, balancing the intel- 



EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 3 1 

lectual by the spiritual, and curbing the emotions 
and desires of the lower nature. 

Thus his higher powers develop naturally, with- 
out using any method of artificial forcing, and he 
attains to that perfection of knowledge which 
gives him the power to direct the forces of Na- 
ture and to perform so-called miracles. 

The true Lanu (disciple) however remains ever 
humble and unobtrusive, he does not seek after 
X^ powers or desire them — he asks for nothing but 
gives everything, for well he knows that if 
Esoterism offers all things, it demands all in re- 
turn. All or nothing it asks; all or nothing it 
gives ! 



32 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 



CHAPTER II. 

GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 

Man is naturally religious and turns towards 
some One greater than himself for aid and in- 
spiration ; the tiny spark within him is ever seek- 
ing after the Great Light, as the sunflower, em- 
blem of the Soul, follows the path of her Lord. 
In the morning her golden petals unclose and 
greet the first ray of His arising — at noon she 
worships towards the south, nor ever loses sight 
of His glory while daylight lasts. Thus does man 
throughout his many lives seek after God. 

Each age and each people have had their own 
conception of God, although these conceptions 
have varied in form with the development of the 
different races, all the way from the cruel and 
arrogant tyrant to the sublime and mystical ideals 
of the advanced philosophies of the Orient. The 
ignorant savage worships the medicine-man of his 
tribe, and brings him servile offerings, so that 
by their means he may propitiate the evil spirits 



GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 33 

whom he has been taught to fear. Later and 
more civilized races worship a Personal God and 
serve Him, while they fear death, hell and the 
devil, and strive by every means to escape from 
them. But the characteristics with which men 
endow their Personal God vary so widely that 
we may almost say that each man creates his 
own idea of God and worships his own creation ; 
certain it is that if we could compare ideas, your 
God would not be my God, nor mine yours. 

This has led many, especially scientists, to 
argue that there is no God — in very truth — but 
only an anthropomorphic, man-created deity, and 
that all systems of religion are buik up from be- 
low, the result of man's fertile imagination; that 
therefore Truth, per se, is non-existent, since all 
the most varied conceptions claim to be true, 
although apparently they are in the last degree 
contradictory of each other. 

If we would find order in this chaos of con- 
flicting opinions, we must turn to the Orient, 
Cradle of religion and philosophy, and delve into 
its most sacred mysteries. There we shall find 
the inner esoteric doctrine of the One God, The 
Absolute, of Whom, and by Whom, and from 
Whom are all things. It is the doctrine of 



34 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

Absolute Being, far away beyond all the power of 
man to conceive or express in thought or lan- 
guage, beyond attributes, beyond qualities, be- 
yond the highest reach of human thought. "Para- 
brahman/' we read in the Secret Doctrine, "be- 
ing the Supreme All, the ever-invisible Spirit and 
Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have 
no attribute; the term 'Absolute' very naturally 
precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned 
from being connected with it." 

This conception of The Absolute, The One 
God, Parabrahm, cannot be grasped or under- 
stood by the intelligence, but it is nevertheless 
the basis of all true religion; and though incon- 
ceivable to the human mind, yet it is postulated 
more or less clearly in every known theory of the 
Universe, and is granted by the awakened soul 
without question, like so many another mystery; 
for the soul is the home of That Which 
Knows, and it recognises Truth. 

Parabrahm, The Grand Whole of all that is, 
or was, or ever shall be, is however not the God 
to whom we have been taught to address our 
worship ; nor indeed could we approach in words 
that which is unthinkable. We need the per- 
sonal touch of a Father to guide our faltering 



GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 35 

footsteps, and so when man lifts his heart to his 
highest ideal, to Parabrahm, he clothes this inner, 
super-conscious knowledge of the One God with 
a more or less personal conception, according to 
the degree of his evolution. Thus all Religion 
is from Above first of all, and afterwards from 
below also, as the mind of man adapts the Divine 
Inflow to his own ideals and conceptions. 

The same law is seen to obtain in the birth of 
the individual soul : the Above wakens the below, 
and causes it to aspire towards Itself. Again, 
in the birth of a Great Religion, the New Nir- 
manakaya, or World-Redeemer, descends into a 
sleeping world, and arouses those whose hour has 
struck. It is ever the Fire from above which 
kindles the sacrifice upon the altar! 

Truly the Universe is One, and all birth is One, 
and God is One ! 

Man also is One, for though seemingly so com- 
plex a being, and so varied in his manifestations, 
there is but one part, the Spirit, which is real 
and permanent, and it is by the development of 
this Divine Nature that man is destined to know 
God — to become God — not the Absolute cer- 
tainly, but that Personal God who has so far 



36 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

been the object of the worship of enlightened 
humanity. 

Man then bears, in a state of potency, as a 
germ, a Divine Nature. 

But this Divine Germ, whence did he derive it ? 

To this we answer that unless we accept its 
creation by a miracle, or we give credence to the 
still more incomprehensible theory of a blind, 
yet omnipotent chance, we are unable to explain 
the Divine qualities of man otherwise than by a 
filiation equally Divine. If man can become God, 
if he can accomplish that prodigious ascension 
which surpasses the most sublime hopes, it is be- 
cause, Son of God, he has received from his 
Father the gift of His own nature. And if it has 
been possible for man to receive from God so sub- 
lime an inheritance, we can but conclude that the 
Supreme Being, the Perfect One, is not only a 
possibility but a reality; that, not only He will 
exist when time shall be no more, but that He 
exists now, in all the splendor of His Wisdom 
and His Love. And since He exists, it can only 
be at the end, and as the result of a past evolu- 
tion, exactly similar in its essential features to 
that in which we find ourselves today. God, 
then, must be regarded as a Divine Reality, the 



GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 7>7 

fruit of an anterior evolution; and Man, in his 
true, spiritual nature, is seen to be the Son of 
God, mounting step by step toward the Divine 
Fatherhood. 

All Life is One, eternal, indestructible, the Soul 
of the Universe, which also is One. Everything 
in the Universe, being part of that One, is in 
relation with every other thing, and also with the 
whole, just as we see it to be in the case of the 
physical body, where an injury to one member 
affects, more or less severely, all the others. "If 
one member suffer, all the members suffer with 
it ; or if one member be honored, all the members 
rejoice with it." 

Thus fraternity, true brotherhood, is not only 
. an ideal to be aspired to, it is a universal law and 
a fact in nature; for everything in this physical ^ 
world exists by reason of the mutual helpfulness 
that all parts render to one another. All beings 
belong to one great brotherhood, all are "sparks 
from the hearth of Myalba." 

In the Orient, where for many centuries men 
have concentrated all their life-energies in 
search after the hidden truths of God and the 
human soul, we find a logical and reasonable 
religion, as well as a sublime philosophy. 



38 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

"Upon inaugurating an active period," (the 
birth of a Universe) says the Secret Doctrine, 
"an expansion of the Divine Essence from 
without inwardly, and from within outwardly, 
occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable 
law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is 
the ultimate result of the long chain of cos- 
mical forces thus progressively set in motion. " 

In obedience to this same law there issue 
from the One Being, Three Great Beings, — 
Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, 
and Siva the Transformer — from These come 
forth Seven, then Twelve, Great Beings, the 
Creators and Fathers of all below Them, and 
so on downwards in endless succession, every 
Great Being the God and Father of myriads of 
lesser beings to which he gives birth and whom 
he sustains. Thus the Solar Logos is the Name 
given to the Great Being Who rules and up- 
holds our Solar System, which is indeed His 
body and manifestation. Below Him again in 
dignity and power, but infinitely greater than 
we can yet conceive, is the Great One Who is 
the God and Father of our earth, "of Whom 
and through Whom and by Whom" we are. 

All these came forth in obedience to law 



GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 39 

from the Absolute, a part of His Very Being; 
therefore They are not many but One; and 
when man raises his eyes to heaven, he praises 
the One, by whatever Name he calls Him, for 
what he sees and adores is the hidden Fire, 
Parabrahm, the Supreme Breath, and not the 
Personal semblance which masks it. He who 
separates his personal God from others in his 
mind and says: "Mine is the only true God," 
worships something less than the Absolute and 
is an idolator, whatever his creed; for there 
is but One God and He is the Sublime 
Whole. 



4Q 



FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 



CONSTITUTION OF MAN 
THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES 
ARayof Universal Substance. 



Spiritual / 
Principles\ 

Centre of J*j 
Attraction'-:^ 



Material ,/ 
Principles \ 



A+ma 

THE SPIRIT 

Buddhi 

SPIRITUAL SOW. 

Manas 

HUM AM SOUL 

r^ KamaRupa 

**/ ANIMAL SOUL 

Linga Sharira 

ASTRAL BODY 

Jiva 

VITALITY 

Rupa 



DIAGRAM I. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 41 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 

The occidental mind, trained in all the 
materialism of the vigorous and literal West, 
necessarily finds it difficult to enter the field 
of Oriental Thought. This is true, first, be- 
cause of the exclusively philosophical terms in 
which the esoteric teachings are given — terms 
wholly incompatible with the usual habit of 
western expression; and second, on account of 
the difficulties of the language itself. To the 
oriental mind Sanscrit is a powerfully sugges- 
tive instrument of expression. Rich in imagery, 
it leads by subtle and alluring paths to the very 
heights of knowledge, and the disciple, ever 
eager to learn — to know, is led irresistibly on 
and on, deeper and deeper into the mystery, 
farther and farther into the heights. On the 
other hand, the western tongues into which 
the Ancient Wisdom must be translated, offer 
no such facilities for intricate and subtle 



42 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

investigation, and consequently the free passage 
of the spirit of esoterism is obstructed or at 
least clouded. 

This difficulty, therefore, has led many writ- 
ers on oriental philosophy to employ — for the 
sake of their vibrations — Sanscrit words and 
phrases, and the occidental reader complains of 
the "technical terms" — terms over which con- 
secutive thought trips and stumbles till the 
rationality of the text is lost in a maze of defi- 
nitions, that however do not define. Unfor- 
tunately the western languages are destitute of 
even the vocal elements to express such strange 
and unfamiliar thought - forms as esoterism 
presents. Nevertheless, by careful comparison 
and by the parallel of objective knowledge, a 
medium of comprehension may be established. 

We take therefore the seven mystic names 
applied to the seven philosophical divisions of 
being, as represented by the oriental writers. 
These the western student may readily under- 
stand, for they can be located or at least ap- 
proximated in the physical body. 

The Western doctrine of the three-fold nature 
of life is indeed the trinity out of which, with 
a little doubling up, we shall see the seven 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 43 

principles of the Orient appear. For if man 
is three-fold in nature, body, soul and spirit, 
so body, in its turn, is three-fold, soul three- 
fold and spirit also three-fold, in manifesta- 
tion — ostensibly nine in all, but the accompany- 
ing chart will show the overlapping of the folds 
that makes the third principle of the body to be 
the first principle of the soul, and in the same 
way the third plane of the soul becomes the 
first plane of the spirit. 

For the present we will follow the occi- 
dental methods and begin with the lowest prin- 
ciple (the Oriental always works from above 
downward), pointing out the manifestation of 
each principle in the visible man — the man of 
material organs and of so-called immaterial 
thoughts, emotions and desires, contrasting the 
Oriental with the Occidental concepts. 

In the teachings of the Occident we have, 
first the physical body with its vast and intricate 
system of cells and of circulating mediums. 
Second, Vitality. The body lives under the 
double influence of the blood and of the net- 
work of nerve cells called the sympathetic sys- 
tem. Life is carried continuously to every part 
of the organism by the blood, but a reserve is 



44 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

always held in the Sympathetic Ganglia. Third, 
Will. The body moves — has volition under the 
influence of the will, which controls the actions 
of the different parts by means of the motor 
and sensory nerves. 

Let us now examine the teachings of the 
Orient and bring out the harmony which exists 
between these two poles of thought, so that we 
may smooth the way of the investigator and 
make it possible for him to understand and per- 
haps to see the truth of and accept the seven- 
fold classification. We have, first, Rupa — which 
the higher occultism holds to be complex in 
organism, consisting of cells: differing from 
each other in form and function, all of which 
corresponds to the scientific conclusion of the 
Western mind. Second, Prana — the energy of 
this aggregate of cells. Third, the Astral Body. 

BODY 

Oriental Occidental 

i. rupa the Physical Body 

2. prana Vitality 

3. The astral body Will to move 

Thus we have located the first three principles, 
and shown that the Orient and the Occident are 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 45 

thus far in harmony in their teachings. Let 
us now see whence comes the fourth principle, 
and following that, the three superior principles 
which are given by occultism to the constitution 
of man. 

The third principle, the Astral Body, is known 
by Oriental Science to have other functions than 
that of directing the movement of the various 
fluids in circulation. It is a condensation of the 
life force itself, in other words the Body of Life, 
and we use it again as the first of a new group 
of three principles, representing three aspects of 
life, just as the three principles which we have 
examined above are three aspects of body. 

Fourth, the nervous ganglia of the chest and 
abdomen — the Grand Sympathetic — are not only 
the mysterious motor-power of our organism but 
also the dynamo of the subconscious or instinctive 
mind, and this instinctive mind, called by the 
Orientals Kama Rupa, the Body of Desire, is the 
fourth principle. It is the Life of Life, the very 
center of life itself. 

Following the nervous system of the physical 
structure a step farther, we locate in the brain the 
psychic powers, the faculties of the Intelligence, 
Reason and Memory, and these constitute the 



46 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

Fifth Principle, known as Manas, or the Human 
Soul. 

Thus we have completed our second group of 
three principles and this group constitutes the 
Life or Soul of Man: 

SOUL 

Oriental Occidental 

3. The astral body the Condensation 

of the Magnetic 
Fluids or the 
Body of Life. 

4. KAMA rupa, the 
Animal Soul, Desire 
or the Instinctive Na- 
ture the Life of Life. 

5. manas, the Human 
Soul, Intellect, Reason, 

Memory the Directing 

power of the Life. 

Yet Intellect, that marvellous faculty of which 
man is so proud, is but the lowest of the mani- 
festations of a third group — Spirit; for, as 
Esoterism ranks Wisdom above Knowledge, so 
it values spirituality above intellectuality. This 
third group, then, is composed of three mani- 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 47 

festations of Pure Spirit, the 5th, 6th and 7th 
Principles. 

The 5th Principle forms the basis or body of 
spiritual activities. 

As to the 6th Principle, Buddhi, only a Master 
or an Adept has evolved to a knowledge of 
Spiritual Wisdom. In those few souls, who are 
so far in advance of the present humanity, this 
Principle is manifested in the development of 
special brain cells at the top of the head. 

But above and beyond all this — wholly incom- 
prehensible except to the vision of a Master is 
that 7th Principle, Atma, the Spirit of the 
Spiritual Man. 

Thus we have our third group of Principles, 
descriptive of the Spiritual Nature of man, as 
follows: 

SPIRIT 

Oriental Occidental 

5. manas, Intellect and 

Soul activities the Body of Spirit. 

6. buddhi, Wisdom the Life of the Spirit. 

7. atma Pure Spirit. 

In the present cycle the average man is occu- 
pied in developing his 5th Principle and bring- 



48 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

ing his lower kamic nature into subservience to 
the mandates of Reason. The two faculties, 
Reason and Memory, which mark his progress 
are however very imperfect; his body is coarse, 
notwithstanding its complexity; his intelligence 
is uncertain; his Will has not even the firmness 
of instinct ; his affection is still egotistical : he has 
yet many stages to pass before attaining the full- 
ness of his growth. Therefore the 7th Principle 
cannot be located in Man at the present stage 
of his development ; it is, however, to be seen by 
those whose vision is clear and strong, hovering 
above the head, like a radiant sun, (Diagram 2) 
the center of all the energies and the fount of all 
the possibilities of the Being. As man evolves, 
this center of energy, this Divine Spark of 
Spiritual Intelligence, comes more and more into 
manifestation, and becomes more closely identi- 
fied with the life of the individual. His evolu- 
tion continues with regularity and continuity 
towards its goal, Divinity ; for some day man will 
know himself as God. He will have reached this 
perfection, little by little, having mounted, by 
degrees, slowly and laboriously, all the steps of 
the immense Cosmic Spiral. 

And since gradual evolution, in ever widening 




DIAGRAM 2. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 49 

cycles, is the law that governs manifestation in 
the Universe, so man climbs, day by day and age 
after age, towards the consciousness of his Di- 
vine Sonship. 

"Just as from a blazing fire are thrown off, on 
every side, thousands of sparks, each one resem- 
bling its parent; even so does the diversity of 
creations come forth from that which is imper- 
ishable and return to it." 



50 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND THE ODIC FLUID 

In the last chapter we deviated for a moment 
from our text, Esoterism, to show that a real 
basic harmony exists between the Orient and the 
Occident in their teachings as to the nature and 
constitution of man, although the ways in which 
they express themselves are different. For the 
Oriental mind, being contemplative, expresses 
from the center outwards or from above down- 
wards; while his more active and practical 
brother of the Occident builds up his subject 
from below, a plan which, in deference to his 
way, we follow in our parallel. We will now 
return to our former Esoteric view-point, and 
give these same teachings as presented by the 
Occultist. 

The theory of Occultism holds man to be of a 
three-fold nature ; a life principle, a plastic medi- 
ator, and a physical body. 

I. The life principle— intelligent, conscious 



PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 5 1 

and perceptive — is that which gives rise to the 
psycho-vibratory currents, those currents which, 
radiating from the Center of Spiritual Intelli- 
gence on the cerebro-spinal and ganglionic sys- 
tems (see diagram 2, 1 e) produce the different 
functions of life in the internal viscera. This 
same life principle also interprets the inflowing 
currents from the organs at the surface — that 
stand as sentinels on the borders to report the 
contact of universal life. 

2. The plastic mediator. This principle in- 
cludes the whole of these currents, both those 
which flow from the life-principle and those 
which return to it; and since, in the human 
organism, there is not one single point that does 
not reflect a nervous current, the plastic mediator 
permeates the whole of the human form with the 
Odic fluid of which it is composed. It is called 
"mediator" because in reality it is the intermedi- 
ary between the life-principle and the physical 
body; and it is called "plastic" since it can take 
any form whatever, owing to its fluidic nature, 
just as a liquid adapts itself exactly to the vase in 
which it is contained. 

This fluidic form, when externalised, presents 
an etheric double of the human form, and may be 



52 



FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 



perceived, shining with a phosphorescent light, 
by those persons who are sensitive, or by those 
who possess double vision. It can also be photo- 
graphed by a method which is explained later in 
the chapter. 

3. A physical body, purely material, without 
life in and of itself, without feeling, without 




DIAGRAM 3. 

movement, or any of the other conditions proper 
to organic matter. 

These then are the three life-principles of man, 
and the occultist is prepared to show how, from 
the interaction of these with each other, all the 
infinite variety of man's relations with God, the 



PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 53 

Universe and his fellow-man, are made possible. 
As we are dealing here only with "First Prin- 
ciples of Esoterism" we can but point to the most 
evident and easily proven of these, and put the 
beginner in the way of demonstrating for him- 
self the existence of the plastic mediator and 
even of the Spiritual Intelligence (IE) pictured 
in diagram 3 above the head of man. 

To the mind of the Western Savant who would 
accept the theory of the plastic mediator or 
etheric double, a great difficulty presents itself, 
for he naturally asks how this double can live, 
and whence it derives its nourishment. 

This question calls for an explanation of the 
functions of one of the organs of the human 
machine concerning which very little is known 
to western science. That organ is the spleen. 

It has been thought by different peoples that 
the spleen modified in some way the affections 
and moral sentiments. But the influence it is 
supposed to exert varies in different countries. 
In France, for example, it is thought to produce 
gaiety, whilst in England it is considered the 
organ of sadness and nostalgia. However that 
may be, the spleen, being the most voluminous 
of the glandular organs of the body, it would be 



54 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

very surprising if it did not play some grand 
role in the organic functions. The "remarkably 
large and tortuous artery" (Leonard) brings it a 
supply of rich, red arterial blood that would seem 
to be far too great for the needs of an organ 
whose duties to the body were as small and in- 
significant as those which have, so far, been at- 
tributed to it by western scientists. One fact is 
known however, although its significance still 
escapes the investigator, and that is that the 
blood which has passed through the splenic pulp 
is impoverished of hematic elements and rich in 
lymphatic. The red corpuscles have suffered in 
the spleen a special operation, that has trans- 
formed them into leucocites or white corpuscles. 
The deduction that the ordinary scientist 
draws from this, "that the spleen is the grave- 
yard for the red blood corpuscle" (Prof. C. H. 
Stowell as quoted by Leonard) is far short of 
indicating the real function of this organ; but 
occult science knows it to be the Center of rela- 
tion between the plastic mediator and the physi- 
cal body. It knows the work of the spleen to 
consist in receiving from the red corpuscle of the 
blood its store of vitality; and this vitality, as 
Odic fluid, nourishes and sustains the plastic 
mediator and etheric double of man. 



PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 55 

If this contention be true, and it can be proven, 
it shows the materialistic scientist to be in error 
in supposing that the physical processes of the 
body are planned for the benefit of the physical, 
visible man; for the red hematic corpuscle of 
arterial blood which is thus diverted to the use 
of the invisible man is acknowledged to be the 
synthetic and definitive result of all organic opera- 
tions, from the elaboration and purging of the 
food taken in, to its assimilation in the capillaries 
of the duodenum. Not the support of the physi- 
cal body but that of the plastic mediator is thus 
seen to be the first and principal aim of the sub- 
conscious activities of man, and this teaching is 
in accord with religion, as indeed is occult 
science always. Not the body but the soul of 
man is the link with his true divine nature and 
with God, and, in spite of himself, his activities 
are being directed towards the preservation in- 
tact of that link. 

In all the experiments of Occult Science and in 
the demonstrations of Occult Powers the spleen 
is in great activity, for it has to furnish fluid 
and life to the plastic mediator and to the etheric 
double, both of which vibrate under the strain 
with so great a mobility that the body could not 



56 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

resist without the sustaining aid of this organ. 
Therefore it has been called, and rightly, the 
Occult Organ. 

The supreme cause — the origin and manifesta- 
tion of all occult phenomena — is the fluidic, vital 
Odic Force, which exists throughout all nature 
and, carried by the nervous currents of the plastic 
mediator, permeates not only every part of the 
human organism, but every other being as well. 
It is through this fluid that man comes in touch 
with the occult world, for by means of the Will it 
puts him in communication with all living 
beings, visible or invisible. It circulates through 
all the nervous centers in a double current of 
Magnetic and of Odic fluids, and this circulation 
forms what is known as Odic Respiration. 
Also it becomes the vehicle and conductor of 
that incessant worker in the immense human 
laboratory — the Will. 

In fact, by means of this fluid the whole uni- 
verse is in movement. All breathes, all gravi- 
tates, all tends to perfection, all maintains a 
majestic equilibrium in and by it. It is the 
source of life, not only in the microcosm, but 
also in the macrocosm. 

When the Plastic Mediator is seen by the sen- 



. PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID $J 

sitive, or is photographed, it is surrounded by a 
phosphorescent aureola of Odic Fluid, which is 
its proper radiation. Such a photograph may be 
obtained by establishing a current of astral light 
between the exteriorized plastic mediator of a 
sensitive, and the objective of a camera. Or 
this radiation may be seen by introducing the 
subject into a dark room and observing him 
from a little distance. After a short time, a 
phosphorescence will be seen, more or less 
clearly, at the part of the room where he is 
seated, and if the observation is continued it will 
show the outline of the body, and take on pris- 
matic hues of red or blue rays according to the 
intensity of the force of the vibration. The red 
color corresponds to the left side of the body of 
the human being, and the blue to the right side. 

All of these phenomena will not show them- 
selves at the first sitting, but will appear gradu- 
ally from time to time as the investigations pro- 
ceed. 

Those beings who possess a greater quantity 
of Odic force have a proportionate power over 
other beings who possess less of it. This ex- 
plains the power exerted by such a man as 
Napoleon Bonaparte for instance. Obscure in 



58 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

station, insignificant in stature, he yet radiated a 
force that made him obeyed by all about him, and 
even by those at a distance; for the Odic Fluid 
can act upon the absent as well as on those pres- 
ent, if it is rightly understood and directed by 
a firm will. But even Napoleon failed, for only 
the Occultist can continue to stand for all time 
alone against the world, and so the great man, 
who is not truly an Adept, sooner or later falls, 
and his work perishes. Ambition, pride and a 
domineering selfish nature may bear a man for a 
time on the crest of a great wave of success, 
but where there is no depth of spiritual energy 
the wave breaks on the sand, turns over and over, 
and drags down to destruction that which it has 
but now uplifted. 

It takes an energy of the highest order, with- 
out a particle of self-seeking, the true Divine In- 
telligence (see chart 2, I E) to attain to power 
over Nature's forces that shall never fail, and 
this height is reached as yet by few. 

The Atharva Veda says: "He who has pene- 
trated into the secret of the wherefore of things, 
who has raised himself by meditation to the 
knowledge of Immortal Principle, who has morti- 
fied his body and advanced his soul, who knows 



PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 59 

the mysteries of Being and Non-Being, who 
knows all the transformations of the vital mole- 
cule, from Brahma to man, and from man again 
to Brahma, this one is in communication with the 
Pitris, and he commands the Occult Forces of 
Nature". 



6o FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 



CHAPTER V. 

MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSAL SCHEME 

Not only is it necessary for man to know his 
own nature but he must also realize, to the full, 
his place in the universal life. He is but a single 
cell of the Great Life, and, as he must function 
in union with his associate cells, the more intelli- 
gently he does so, the more of harmony will he 
establish in the vast complex organism, the 
Cosmos. 

The general scheme of the Universe, as taught 
by Occultism may be outlined in a few words by 
means of an illustration. 

A steamer launched on an immense ocean sails 
toward the port' assigned as the end of the voy- 
age. All which the steamer contains is carried 
forward together, and yet each traveller is free 
to arrange his cabin as he pleases ; he may go up 
on the bridge-deck to contemplate the Infinite, 
or he may descend into the hold ; he may drowse 
away the days, wrapped in his rug in a secluded 



man's place in the universal scheme 6i 

corner, or he may mingle with his fellow-pas- 
sengers. The journey goes on day by day for 
the whole, but each one is free to act as he will, 
being merely subservient to the general law. 
All social classes are represented on this boat, 
from the poor emigrant who sleeps on the deck 
wrapped in a sack, to the rich man in his cabin e 
de luxe ; but the rains, the storms and the sun- 
shine are the same for all ; and so is the speed of 
the onward rush of the great ship through the 
battling waves; and all will arrive at the same 
port at the same time. 

The analogy may be further unfolded in the 
detail and equipment of the ship, and in the 
power that moves its mighty engines. In them 
a blind force (steam) generated by a special 
factor (heat) is conducted to an unconscious, 
complex machine, causing it to operate by fixed 
laws ; thus driving the ship forward, through 
calm or tempest to its desired haven. But this 
blind force, with its allied machinery, even though 
under the direct control of the skilled engineer, 
would as readily, and quite as likely, drive the 
ship on the rocks as on its safe and proper course, 
without a master-mind which can see and control 
its direction. 



62 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

This master-mind is the Captain. In his chart 
room with his instruments, and on the lofty 
bridge, where he can see over the entire length 
of the ship and all about her, with his knowledge 
of the laws of navigation, he figures with mathe- 
matical exactness the location of his vessel on 
the great ocean, and directs her further progress 
toward the far-off destination. He does not di- 
rectly control the engines, that, with their power- 
ful throbs, seem to make the ship a thing of life ; 
he does not feed the passengers; he does none 
of the detailed work of operating the giant or- 
ganism, and yet his will is law in every minutest 
detail, and in a moment of danger is rigorously 
enforced. The Captain holds in the hollow of 
his hand the fate of every individual soul on 
board, so far as the voyage is concerned. 

Let us now make the application: — The Uni- 
verse may be compared to an immense steamer, 
of which He whom we call God is the Captain. 
With His greater intelligence, he guides its pro- 
gress through time and space, by orders to His 
inferior officers, each of whom is in charge of, 
and skillfully controls his own department. Na- 
ture is the machinery, the entire mechanism, 
which drives the whole system forward blindly 



man's place in the universal scheme 63 

according to fixed laws. Human beings are the 
passengers. These are ignorant of the methods 
and laws by which the ship traverses the track- 
less waste of waters; they occupy themselves as 
they please during the voyage, each according 
to his own tastes and inclinations. But the offi- 
ers know when a storm is coming and they put 
in action all the powers of their science to pre- 
vent disaster. While the ordinary passenger is 
content to be acted upon by fate and passively 
endures, as he may, the conditions about him, the 
officers react on those same conditions, controll- 
ing and changing them. Having powers, they 
use them in serving the ignorant, directing the 
progress of those more advanced, and protecting 
all. 

Thus it is seen to be most essential that we 
learn something of the hidden forces which play 
upon us — forces which, though invisible to our 
ordinary sight, we yet sense with that finer sensi- 
tiveness awakening in many of us. 

In chapter 4 we have said that there is, besides 
the visible man, an invisible being who dwells 
in union with the physical man and causes him 
to live and act. And this is true also of the 
"Grand Man," the Cosmos, and of every other 



64 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

Being, whether Universe, Sun, Planet or indi- 
vidual — the visible presentation is only a reflec- 
tion of the Real, which is invisible but potent. 

The teachings of esoterism tell us of the ex- 
istence of an etheric substance throughout the 
entire universe, which Occultists name "Akasa," 
or the Astral Light, and they say that the Soul 
of man is a mass of astral light, forming a union 
between the outer or physical man and the inner 
or spiritual being. 

The earth floats in the ether, or Akasa, as do 
fish in the ocean; all the objects which constitute 
our world are continually bathed in the Astral 
Light, and more than bathed, they are interpene- 
trated with it, for matter forms no obstacle to its 
passage. Unconsciously, during sleep, we per- 
ceive the objects which constitute the astral 
world, just as during our waking hours we see 
the objects of the physical world; and the objects 
of this etheric, intangible and extremely chang- 
ing environment are not less real on their plane 
than are the physical objects on the physical 
plane. Being plastic, the astral substance is elu- 
sive and shifting to the last degree; it responds 
to every nascent thought, it gathers like a thun- 
der-cloud to simulate passion, its pictures come 



man's place in the universal scheme 65 

and go with equal inconsequence — apparently as 
changing and unstable as the wave of the ocean. 
We say "apparently" with intention, for though 
on the lower subplanes conditions prevail which 
seem to be fraught with danger, this is not the 
case to the disciple who enters this realm from 
above. 

To the extreme mobility of astral matter is add- 
ed a power of illusion, almost a love of decep- 
tion it might be called, which is the cause of the 
downfall of many a too-curious investigator. On 
this plane, truly, "Appearances are deceptive" to 
everyone except the trained occultist, for he alone 
understands the laws of this plane, and can draw 
the right conclusions from what he sees. This 
is why many of the details described by clair- 
voyants prove to be inaccurate ; the medium may 
be sincere and describe faithfully that which he 
believes he sees, but, being untrained, he is de- 
ceived by "Maya." 

We can say nothing in detail here in "First 
Principles" concerning the many kinds of ele- 
mentals, elementaries and unevolved beings 
which crowd this world ; in a later work we will 
give some illustrations of their forms and explain 
their nature B and origin; but the astral world is 



66 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

not one where the disciple will find great spiritual 
upliftment, and if he is wise he will put away all 
curiosity and desire concerning it until with a 
strong will, indomitable courage, pure motive and 
humility, he is master of himself. Then he may 
safely confront its many dangers. 

There is however one function of this ocean 
of astral substance which must be touched upon 
— that of creation. In this intermediary world 
whose vibrations vary from the subtlest aspira- 
tion where they approach the spiritual realm, 
down to the lowest desire of the animal, there 
float the thoughts of men — thoughts of every 
form and hue, some beautiful, others truly awful. 
These thoughts flow in currents, those of a kind 
approaching each other, seeking like vibrations 
with their own. When man withdraws his at- 
tention from the physical to think deeply, he en- 
ters this world and attracts to himself such 
thought-currents as he is able to command, and 
from them he takes that which he is seeking. 

Besides the thoughts, the desires also of men 
(and animals) take form and substance in the 
astral— from the aspiration of the spiritually en- 
lightened to the lust of the brute — desires of 
evil, desire of selfish aggrandizement of all 



man's place in the universal scheme 67 

kinds, desire of money, all sorts of ambitions as 
well as the pure desire of intellectual achieve- 
ment and spiritual light. These desires are inter- 
woven inextricably with the thought-substance 
of which they form the nucleus or life (for there 
is hardly a thought of ours that does not owe its 
birth to desire), and they cause it to vibrate with 
an intensity that varies with the depth of the 
emotion. 

All creation takes place by means of this ocean 
of etheric substance, and in accordance with its 
laws, however unconscious the operator may be 
of the means he is employing or the laws he is 
obeying. All things are first created in the Di- 
vine World in principle, or in potentiality of be- 
ing; this principle then passes on to the astral 
plane and there manifests in negative — that is, 
all that was luminous in the principle becomes 
obscure, and vice-versa, all that was dark be- 
comes luminous. It is not the exact image of 
the principle which is manifested, it is the mould 
of that image. The mould being once obtained, 
creation on the astral plane is finished. 

Then commences creation on the physical plane 
in the visible world. The astral form, acting 
upon matter gives birth to the physical form just 



68 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

as a mould gives form to a vessel, and thus the 
sublimest ideal of the artist, drawn from the 
spiritual plane by the force of his aspiration, is 
moulded in the astral, then formed in the physi- 
cal — clothed in colors on the canvas, hewn in 
stone or marble. The form which is obtained 
on the physical plane is but the reflection of a 
reflection; and in following the law of all re- 
flections it has lost in brilliance of tone and clear- 
ness of outline; nevertheless it is the best we 
have at present, and it serves to raise the heart 
of man nearer to the realm of truth. Without the 
mediation of the astral substance, even this would 
have been impossible, for the spiritual cannot 
manifest in terms of the physical, nor can mat- 
ter grasp spirit; there must be a medium of in- 
terpretation. 

Without aspiration, thought, desire, imagina- 
tion and faith in the invisible, how could man 
soar? These are the stars of man's firmament — 
stars that lift his eyes to the pure realm of spirit 
and set him gazing into the depths of space. 
"Without the stars/' it has been asked, "what 
would man have become ?" 

The existence of this etheric substance, Akasa, 
throughout the entire Universe is one of the 



man's place in the universal scheme 69 

basic teachings of esoterism, and it offers the 
scientific explanation of all super-conscious and 
sub-conscious activities. It also shows the pos- 
sibility of clairvoyance, clairaudience and other 
psychic phenomena. The superconscious activi- 
ties are those in which the human soul comes in 
touch, by means of the higher astral vibrations, 
with the spiritual realm; the subconscious show 
man's life on the lower astral — the plane of in- 
stinct or Kama Rupa. When a person is clair- 
voyant the outer sensibilities have, from some 
cause, become blunted; a passing inferiority is 
thus induced in the condition of the body, and at 
the same time a superiority in the condition of 
perception. The medium may voluntarily throw 
himself into this state, or it may be induced hyp- 
notically by another, or again it may be sponta- 
neous, the result of weakness. In any case the 
effect is the same, for the subject becomes sensi- 
tive, as we say, to more subtle vibrations than 
those which were normally possible for him to 
respond to, and so having withdrawn his atten- 
tion temporarily from the outer, he perceives 
those finer vibrations of the Astral Light to 
which he is ordinarily blind. The same expla- 
nation applies to the clairaudient whose spiritual 



70 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

hearing becomes in a similar way so abnormally 
acute that a whole new world of sound is opened 
up to him, and all animate and inanimate Na- 
ture finds voice. At times he even catches a 
far-off, ineffable harmony — a "music of the 
spheres'' beyond words. 

The Akasa is the reservoir of events, past, 
present and future; it is therefore to the Akasic 
records that the Adept has recourse when it be- 
comes necessary to trace out the details of any 
period of the world's history, to revive an ancient 
race, or to look forward into the future and see 
that which shall be. Here are preserved the 
trace of all effects produced by spiritual causes, 
as well as all the acts and all the thoughts pro- 
ceeding from matter and from spirit, so that the 
Akasa has been rightly named, "The Book of the 
Angel of Judgment." 



INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 71 

CHAPTER VI. 

INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 

When we go back into the far-off past, a past 
so remote that the mind is powerless in its efforts 
to image an epoch so distant — when we look 
back to the dawn of the Solar System, more than 
nineteen and a half hundred millions of years 
ago, as we are told by the oldest Occult records, 
"We see Ishwara, as a mountain of light, appear- 
ing to illumine the darkness." "Then," we are 
told, "Ishwara unfolds himself, and there appear 
in a higher state of activity all the hierarchies 
of Beings who formed the life of the preceding 
Universe; all the Intelligences, all the forms, all 
the souls, and all the bodies." From the very 
point where they were left when the total de- 
struction overtook them, they start again to take 
up their evolution. 

In this prodigious descent of the Invisible to- 
wards the Visible, of Spirit into matter, a rig- 
orous order is preserved. First we see, issuing 
forth in wondrously magnificent outline, three 



J2 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

mighty and divine forms — the Three Great 
Persons which, under one name or another, all 
religions revere and all philosophies recognize — 
the three whom the Orientals know as Brahma, 
the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, 
the Destroyer. Then, in the Light which ema- 
nates from these glorious Forms, we see the 
Grand Cosmic Entities, those "Seven" Great Be- 
ings — Archangels — Sephiroth, the "Seven Spir- 
its in the Sun" — it matters little the name by 
which They are known to different peoples. And 
as we gaze still further into the glory which ra- 
diates from the seven we see the twelve — 
those who conduct the evolution of the Chains, 
of the Globes, and of the Races. And following 
these comes a hierarchy of divine men who, in 
the ages of the past, have raised themselves above 
the level of humanity. These are the "fruit" of 
the past Universes, and They descend into the 
inferior worlds only to instruct and to liberate 
the human masses. They are the great souls, 
"Mahatmas," the Masters of Wisdom and Com- 
passion, our Elder Brothers, to Whom we al- 
ways turn for inspiration and for aid, Who oc- 
cupy in the evolutionary series a necessary place 
between God and man. 



INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 73 

Thus, then, is accomplished the great sacri- 
fice, — the putting forth of Himself by the Logos, 
in order that in the fullness of time many indi- 
vidualities may be drawn back into the Great 
Source, to share consciously with Him that bliss 
which is His very nature and essence. 

Thus does Spirit descend into matter, and tak- 
ing on ever increasing limitations, it is crucified, 
dies and is buried in matter. Yet "after three 
days" does it rise again, and begin the ascent to- 
wards the Source from whence it came. 

But the true Man — the Real Being within us 
never appears upon the earth. That which we 
see and recognize as a personality is only an ema- 
nation — an efflux from the Real Man who for- 
ever lives the perfect Life in a sphere unknown 
to the worldly personality. Indeed, this worldly 
personality, in its present state of development, 
is quite incapable of understanding its True Self. 
The Real Man, who in occultism is designated 
the self, is the permanent part of the human be- 
ing, and it remains in the sphere of reality — 
that last and highest sphere beyond the six other 
spheres which, though more or less elevated, are 
spheres of appearance only. The True Man is 
not found in the material world, nor in the astral 



74 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

world, nor in the mental world, neither in the 
world of Devakan, nor in the Buddhic; not even 
in the spiritual world. For all these personali- 
ties, if we may call them so, are capable of trans- 
formation, and in consequence are relatively mor- 
tal ; that is to say, they are not Eternal. 

The source then of the real being must be 
sought in the bosom of the absolute. And since 
the true man is in the absolute, it follows that 
he is not in any of the personalities which he en- 
souls; for he is atman or Spiritual Principle, 
paranirvana and parabrahm — the Great 
Whole, the Principle of Universal Mind, the 
Creator of All ! 

The septenary chain, Body, Vitality, Fluidic 
Form, Animic Form, Astral, Mental, and Physi- 
cal Bodies, are not the self, the true man ; for, 
as we have seen, He is not visible to the Being 
on earth as yet. He can never descend to the 
earth, or to any of the other planets till his evolu- 
tion shall be entirely complete. 

This problem is very difficult of comprehen- 
sion, but we will try by means of an illustration 
ta give a slight idea of it. Suppose that the true 
being of man were a luminous ball, vibrating by 
the energy of its own existence far above all the 



INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 75 

spheres of which we have spoken. When the 
true being wills to constitute a human person- 
ality it sends forth into the realm nearest to it a 
ray which gathers about itself from the Spiritual 
Substance of that realm a sheath or covering, or- 
ganizes it into a body, and descends thus clothed 
into the next lower sphere. Here it repeats the 
process, adding a second and outer covering; — 
it then descends into the physical world, taking 
a physical body suitable to the needs of that 
sphere. In other words it lowers its vibrations as 
it descends from plane to plane, taking- upon it- 
self the limitations of each sphere in succession. 
This process is indeed continued in each of these 
realms throughout the whole life and is pro- 
longed through all the lives, whether physical, 
astral or spiritual. 

The True Human Being, which we will call 
"The Human Monad'' exists then beyond and 
outside of these seven states, (if subdivided). It 
is composed of energies to be manifested, and 
the Ray which it projects into the seven spheres 
of manifestation, is a group of these energies; 
the function of this group being to manifest it- 
self on all the planes of existence. When it 
has completed its manifestation, it returns to 



j6 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

the Monad from which it was sent forth, bring- 
ing in its harvest of experiences which it has 
gathered during its stay upon the different planes 
of manifestation. The Essence, that last an- 
alysis of the experiences of the personality which 
has finished its course upon the physical, astral 
and spiritual planes, re-enters within the Monad ; 
and in time a new group of energies, constitut- 
ing a new personality, is sent forth to accom- 
plish, in turn, a series of manifestations upon 
the seven planes. And this goes on from the 
beginning to the end of a Manvantara or period 
of 306 million 720 thousand years, seven of which 
Manvantaras constitute the evolution of a Uni- 
verse. 

And so we see that it is an illusion to think 
that the physical, astral or spiritual personality 
of one single life can subsist throughout one en- 
tire Manvantara. That of each personality 
which does persist is the modification suffered by 
the group of energies, manifested under the 
mask of the personality. Each manifestation 
leaves throughout the Manvantara a residue, 
which has, however, as little resemblance to the 
personage as the little heap of ashes, remaining 
after burning a corpse, resembles the living man. 



INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION JJ 

The personalities, as we know them, are in truth, 
destroyed, (on this point we agree with the 
materialists), but personality is one thing, In- 
dividuality is another. The one is lost, the other 
remains. And so the materialists err because 
they make no distinction between the essence and 
its outer shell ; they do not know that this essence, 
being of a different nature cannot suffer the 
same fate as the personality. This fades away, 
since it is but illusion, — like the form of the 
body when burned; but the Individuality, the 
reality, enriched with the result of experiences, 
remains, like the little heap of ashes. 

Each personality is nothing more or less than 
an experiment made by the Monad. It is, as it 
were, a kind of probe, which the Monad plunges 
into the three spheres of existence to take know- 
ledge of them, and which it afterwards draws 
back, bringing with it its record of experiences. 
Have you ever watched a snail? Did you ob- 
serve the use which it makes of its horns? See 
it advance them slowly as if to take notice of 
the surroundings in which it finds itself; and 
every time they come up against an obstacle, a 
new substance, a vibration, a sensation of any 
kind whatever, immediately it draws them in, as 



78 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

if to listen to their account of the experience. 
The Monad may be compared, not inaptly, with 
the snail. Each time the snail puts out her horns 
symbolizes the projection of a personality into 
the world of manifestation by the Monad ; each 
time that the horns are withdrawn corresponds 
to the death of the personality — but the snail 
remains always the snail. It does not die. 

The Monad contains within itself a sum of 
energies destined to test all possible varieties of 
human existence; and each group of energies 
which it projects forms a new personality. It 
takes the Monad the whole length of a Manvan- 
tara to incarnate all the groups of energies which 
we may consider as its constituent molecules; 
and it is evident that, after having completed 
the series of the incarnations of all its different 
groups of energies, the Monad is no longer the 
same as it was before these incarnations; for 
each group of energies has, by experiences on the 
seven planes of manifestation, contributed modi- 
fications to the inner texture of the Monad. It 
cannot have enriched its experience and yet 
remain the same. 

At the end of a Manvantara, therefore, the 
Monad is called to a different destiny from that 
which lay before it at the commencement. And 



INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 79 

this is how we must understand the gaining of 
our Immortality. Immortality is not the herit- 
age of any one of the personalities which we 
know ; it belongs only to that part of the person- 
ality which has been likened to the heap of ashes 
— to that essence which remains, and which is 
made up of the experience gained, and the con- 
sequent modifications suffered, by the monadic 
energies on the seven planes. 

Now, though during life on the physical plane 
our personality lives also on the astral and the 
spiritual planes, still its manifestation on these 
two last-mentioned planes does not necessarily 
end at the same time as the death of the body 
occurs. And so the Spiritists are not wrong in 
believing in the persistence of personalities after 
the physical death ; their error is in the belief that 
this persistence demonstrates the Immortality 
of the personality. These personalities fade out 
eventually on the astral and spiritual planes, just 
as the body falls to pieces on the physical plane ; 
but the energies which form their essence, bear 
back to the Monad their harvest of experience 
which the Monad assimilates, and in so doing 
works in its inner texture changes in preparation 
for the destinies that await it in a future Man- 
vantara. 



8o FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 



CHAPTER VII. 

REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 

The world of today is seeking ardently in 
every field of investigation for some tangible 
evidence of the truth of immortality ; but for the 
most part these researches have been fruitless. 
It is true that there are various schools profess- 
ing to demonstrate the persistence of the person- 
ality; but the proofs they offer, although con- 
vincing to themselves, are found to have but little 
scientific coherence, and are, indeed, capable of 
many other interpretations besides the one given 
by those who present them. The thoughtful man 
is not prepared to yield full credence to any theory 
founded alone on phenomena — he has too often 
been deceived in the past by appearances — and 
he looks back of these for a reasonable and in- 
telligible plan, that shall appeal to something 
more than his curiosity and love of the marvel- 
lous. This plan he does not find. 

Disappointed, yet hopeful, he turns to the field 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 8l 

of science; here he is sure of finding, at least, 
definite and careful investigation and elimination 
of all vague speculation; and by uniting the re- 
sults of the researches of these savants with the 
phenomena of the former school, he thinks that 
he will be able to arrive at a conclusion. But 
the scientist meets him with scepticism, and 
some ridicule: in all his experience with scalpel, 
bistury and microscope, never has he come upon 
anything other than physical manifestation; 
therefore there is nothing more, he illogically 
assumes. Just what life is, he is unable to say; 
but it began at birth and will end with death, of 
that he is confident ! 

From this picture of death as the end of all 
things, the soul of man recoils and almost in 
despair, he returns to the religion of his infancy. 
But even here he finds no comfort, for the teach- 
ings appear to his manhood both vague and con- 
tradictory, as well as cruel and altogether irre- 
concilable with his inner convictions of the good- 
ness and justice of God. If life, he argues to 
himself, begins in the cradle, it must end in the 
tomb, as indeed the materialists declare, for that 
which has a beginning must also have an end. 
And better it were for many that it should so end, 



82 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

he feels, for it has been for most men but one long 
and bitter experience; and even annihilation, as 
taught by the materialist, would be more merci- 
ful than an eternity of torment, though both, as 
it seems to him, would be equally unjust and il- 
logical. Point by point his intelligence brings in 
question all the doctrines of the religions about 
him: " Where is the proof of life beyond the 
grave ?" it asks. "Who are the 'good?' Why are 
they good? Is it good to desire happiness for 
oneself when multitudes are in torment? Is 
a God good who, being omnipotent, can look 
down on such misery and injustice as are in the 
world and not find a remedy ? How about death- 
bed conversions? Is it just that some should be 
born depraved, while others, seemingly, have only 
good impulses and are therefore pure? How 
can a God who is Love consign to eternal punish- 
ment any of his creatures however rebellious? 
No father among us would treat thus his own 
child." 

These are but a few of the questions that form 
a barrier in the path of the thoughtful man when 
he approaches any of the religions of our day ; to 
them and to a host of others equally insistent, he 
seeks in vain an answer. 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 83 

There is but one teaching that offers a key to 
all these problems — Reincarnation. 

Does man's life begin at birth ? Reincarnation 
says : "No, it does but continue what has always 
been." Aeons and aeons ago, there came forth 
from the Creator a Divine Germ; for long ages 
it has involved — descended into matter — now it 
is evolving, consciously learning from every ex- 
perience, whether of pleasure or of pain, and is 
returning to pure spirit, bearing with it the treas- 
ures of its varied experiences. 

The life of man did not begin, but it came 
forth from the source of all life. From the time 
that the first vital undulation, issued from Nir- 
vana, to the present, it continues its work; each 
wave manifesting as an individual soul. Infinite 
in number, these living undulations constitute all 
manifested life in all worlds. The personalities 
which we see masquerading in our world as 
human beings, are, as it were, beads threaded 
upon these life-waves, as the beads of a chaplet 
are upon their string. Each bead may differ in 
a marked way from its neighbor but the string 
is always the same and serves to unite them all. 
Thus while the vital undulation remains the 
same, and the individual is ever the same indi- 



84 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

vidual, yet the personalities are numerous and 
varied enough to include all human experience. 
At one time rich at another poor, in one life 
high in rank in the next humble and obscure, now 
man, now woman, the individual soul passes 
through every possible experience and mounts 
step by step from the foot to the summit of the 
hill of life. 

Many and varied have been its school terms, 
from the first day when it studied in the humblest 
place in the lowest class. Through all the 
grades, it has passed, failing often, but gradually 
advancing in knowledge of the world, in self- 
control and in the consciousness of the powers 
latent within. And every one of such school- 
days represents a life, as the word is generally 
used — a term of years beginning with birth and 
ending with the change called death. This little 
span in which we find ourselves today is but one 
of many, it is relative, not conclusive, and those 
who are suffering now are having an experience 
that is necessary for them and that is, indeed, 
the direct result of some unlearned lesson in their 
past. When they shall have patiently and cheer- 
fully met their present adverse conditions and 
triumphed over them, the cloud will pass over of 
its own accord. 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 85 

All life is in cycles. Thus a day of twenty- 
four hours is one entire cycle, consisting of morn- 
ing, noon, and night; and seven days form an- 
other and larger cycle. Beyond these we have 
months and years, the larger cycle always includ- 
ing the lesser and itself forming part of another 
still greater. In a human life, we have some 
very interesting cycles of seven years, the periods 
of seven, fourteen, and twenty J one, marking 
distinct epochs in the evolution of the individual. 
After three times seven, there are also two other 
cycles of seven that are well-marked — seven times 
seven, or forty-nine, and ten times seven, or the 
allotted threescore years and ten. And accord- 
ing to the Law of Cycles, this whole life of 
seventy or more years is but one of many similar 
lives, all of which together go to make up one 
grand life. Not that this one grand life is separ- 
ate and alone, even; for many of such grand 
cycles go to make up still greater and greater 
cycles of which we can have absolutely no con- 
ception at our present stage of evolution. 

With this wider horizon much of the apparent 
injustice and inequality of the present dispensa- 
tion is done away, and we begin to recognize the 
presence of law and exact retribution in those 



86 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

very circumstances that before had distressed 
us. We catch a glimpse of the workings of a 
law of infinite patience and wisdom, offering 
unlimited opportunity to every soul to learn and 
to triumph — the law of a God who wills that 
every soul shall be saved, and Who provides the 
way of that salvation so clearly and impartially 
that it is impossible for the most unworthy to 
wander for ever. 

Reincarnation teaches us that before a soul 
comes forth into our world as a babe, it has rested 
for a longer or a shorter period in the heaven- 
world, where it has assimilated the harvest of the 
experiences of its former incarnate states. Here 
the desires of the past life have been purified, 
the old failings worked off, the past more or less 
obliterated ; every good thought, good deed, good 
aspiration has been recollected, gone over and 
steeped anew in the quickening spirit, so that it 
may be strengthened and may thus aid in the 
progress of the soul when it shall incarnate 
anew. At last there comes a time when this 
work is completed, the stimulus of past experi- 
ence grows weak, and desire, which is the law of 
the soul, begins to turn towards the laying in of 
a fresh store of earthly joys, thoughts, feelings 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 87 

and emotions; it desires re-birth so that it may 
again meet in the flesh its loved-ones, or that it 
may realize some ambition that remained un- 
fulfilled in the past life, or, in short, that it may 
experience again some of the thousand delights 
that are, and can be, the object of life on earth. 
When these desires awake, the soul passes into 
the sphere of waiting souls and rests there until 
a suitable outlet can be arranged for it by the 
Lords of Karma who care for this realm. All its 
past is again reviewed, all its gains, all its losses 
are instantly apparent to these Great Ones, and 
the soul rises or falls to one of the seven planes 
of waiting where its own state of evolution places 
it in order of merit. 

Some parents, at the moment of conception, 
are able to rise to a very great height of aspira- 
tion, and in so rising, they may touch a soul on 
one of these higher planes and afford it an oppor- 
tunity of re-birth. If, however, as is too often 
the case, there is no such aspiration or desire 
for the advancement of the race, the soul attract- 
ed by the parents will be one of those waiting 
on the lower planes. 

Now, immediately, commences a series of 
changes. Guided by the Lords Who watch over 



88 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

it, the soul begins its approach toward those who 
have attracted it; it undergoes change after 
change, puts on vesture after vesture, limitation 
after limitation, ever suffering and sacrificing, 
yet impelled by desire, the law of the soul. 
Every different vesture brings a new burden 
and weight to the soul, and causes new suffer- 
ing and new sacrifice. Just as is the case in the 
Great Sacrifice described in the last chapter, so 
is the case in this lesser sacrifice: the soul be- 
comes more and more bound by conditions. 

Meanwhile, whilst the soul is approaching the 
parents, the parents also are preparing a suitable 
temple for the soul that is coming to them ; and 
the first cry of the child marks the entrance of the 
first inflow from the Ego. The temple, the baby- 
body, is, naturally, not able at first to bear a 
great strain, it could not receive the whole force 
of the ego at once; there are therefore, certain 
definite periods and stages of growth and of the 
inflow of force. The first inflow takes place at 
birth. Before that time, the ego has over- 
shadowed the mother, and aided her in building 
the body, but there has been no direct control 
from within. From birth onwards the ego 
dwells within, or to be more correct, we would 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 89 

say, he guides the organism from within, and 
every seventh year sees a new influx, new con- 
ditions either in the body, the emotional, psychic 
or spiritual natures. At about seven years of 
age the child begins to ask questions and to 
require intellectual food, then it can be sent to 
school; this is the sign of the second inflow. 
Again at fourteen, the ego makes a further ap- 
proach and pours into the organism the crea- 
tive energies ; this is the third inflow and the 
ego is now in full physical manifestation. The 
further changes which take place every seven 
years throughout the earth-life are equilibrations 
rather than inflows, and are due to activities on 
the higher planes of being. 

These explanations will confirm the view 
which has always been put forward by religion — 
that man's nature is from above as well as from 
below. His body, it is true, has been prepared 
by evolution through all the kingdoms, mineral, 
vegetable and animal, it is subject to change and 
is mortal, but not so the informing spirit, the 
Ego; this is individual and never dies: it is, 
indeed, that vital undulation which comes forth 
from Nirvana and, after a series of trials and 
transformations lasting throughout one Man- 
vantara, returns thither. 



go FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

The individual struggles from dawn to eve, 
from his first appearance in this world, to the 
time he goes out of it, with the problems and 
difficulties of each day; sometimes he triumphs, 
often he fails — but always he learns, whether 
gaining or losing apparently in the fight, and all 
of these experiences serve him as stepping-stones 
to his immortality. It is in this way, indeed that 
he builds his future. 

There is no chance attending our birth-place 
or family, for every detail of all our past lives 
is taken into account by the Great Lords of 
Karma in guiding the reincarnating soul to those 
circumstances best calculated to evolve his bud- 
ding tendencies, and to those persons to whom he 
has been intimately bound in a former life by 
love or by hate, or by some other strong emotion. 

As the child grows, he manifests the character- 
istics that marked him in a past life; he makes 
mistakes which are foreign to the family in which 
he finds himself, yet in many ways he resembles 
them. This agreement, and at the same time 
disagreement, has been a great puzzle to those 
who give an undue importance to the influence of 
heredity, but can be well understood in the light 
of what has been said above ; for it was these very 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 91 

similarities in desire (known as heredity,) which 
attracted this particular ego to these parents in 
the first instance, because the traits of the parents, 
whether good or evil, offer to the child an oppor- 
tunity of manifesting his own good or evil pro- 
pensities. 

It is therefore unjust for a man to charge to 
his parents those faults which he has allowed to 
master him; they are his own, and his parents 
did but give him the opportunity of once more 
facing them and conquering or being conquered 
by them. They are responsible for their weak- 
nesses, and he for his. Nor, on the other hand, 
can parents rightly hold themselves responsible 
for the vices of their sons, except in so far as they 
might, by early training, have strengthened their 
moral nature. The soul of each individual is 
ruled by desire, and until these desires are puri- 
fied and eliminated, the suffering consequent on 
ignorance and self-seeking will continue. 

The teaching of rebirth is pictured very beauti- 
fully in many of the ways of nature. With the 
illustration of the coming forth of the butterfly 
from its chrysalis, all are familiar ; we know that 
the forest tree, today bare, leafless and apparently 
dead, will put forth its buds as soon as spring- 



92 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

time comes and in the summer be alive and heavy 
with foliage and fruit, and that it will continue 
around this cycle for perhaps hundreds of years ; 
we see the perpetual alternation of night and day 
— a period of rest always preceding the activity 
and work of the day, and essential to its success 
— everywhere we find analogies and illustrations 
of Reincarnation, some of them indeed most sug- 
gestive and exactly analogous in every detail and 
similar in their evolution and general features 
to the larger cycle of Life, of which they form a 
part. 

Thus if we regard the life of a man during one 
day, we shall find it to be very similar to that 
life viewed as a whole. When we awake in the 
morning, we arouse ourselves with difficulty from 
the slumber in which we have been steeped, and 
it is some time before our waking activity reaches 
its zenith — probably towards noon of the day. 
From this time on, our strength wanes, until, 
when the sun sets, we are willing to take up the 
"night-ties" of our life, and rejoice in the loving 
activities of the home, the family, leisure and 
sleep — all of which are as essential to the round- 
ing out of a well-ordered life as are the very 
evident occupations of the day. We are all well 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 93 

acquainted with the cycle we have just sketched, 
and if we would apply this to the teaching of 
reincarnation, it throws much light on the soul's 
experience. The analogy is indeed so close be- 
tween the whole life and the life of a day, that 
we have worked it out in detail in Lesson iv of 
the Correspondence Course, to which we recom- 
mend our readers who wish to pursue the sub- 
ject further. 

All life is cyclic. When at first it comes forth, 
it is weak and has little power of manifestation, 
like the new-born child; gradually it gathers 
strength and up to a certain point its activities 
increase; they culminate, then decline from 
maturity into old age. Then the life enters the 
second half of the cycle, corresponding to night, 
where its activities are similar to those of sleep — 
the general renewal of the powers through the 
immersion of the individual soul in the Over 
Soul, or spiritual principle. After a period of 
rest, there follows invariably another time of 
activity as regularly as day follows night. 

By analogy, the whole life of the man is sym- 
bolized in the life of one day of the world's time, 
and his life in the heaven-world by a night's sleep ; 
for, asleep on the physical plane, the soul is but 



94 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

the more untrammelled in its activities in higher 
realms. In the morning, he, like the child, is 
under the influence of the night's slumber, and 
as he awakens more and more to the realities 
of life, he reaches the noon of strength and 
activity. Later, as his physical powers lessen 
with the declining sun, his higher moral nature 
matures, desire for earthly experience diminishes, 
as his power of triumphing outwardly lessens, 
and night finds him ready, like a tired child, to 
rest once again on the bosom of Nature, the 
good nurse, who carries him back to the "Dweller 
in the Heart" the Lord of that realm and the 
Source of that refreshment and spiritual strength 
which he needs ; and here he again resumes those 
relations that are necessary to his life but which 
had been temporarily suspended by his work in 
the world. 

The soul may rest in this heaven-world for 
many years or for few, according to the law 
governing its destiny. If its merits in the past 
have been great, it will have much to assimilate 
and to learn, as well as a great deal of actual 
constructive work to do, so that long periods of 
time often elapse between the incarnations of 
those who are well-evolved. There are also 
many other very intricate considerations govern- 



REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 95 

ing the time of rebirth, into which we do not in- 
tend to enter here. And even in the case of 
those of a very low order of development, who 
are lacking in moral strength, there are still very 
few who have not to their credit, when they pass 
from this terrestrial life some atom of ideality, 
some intellectual aspiration, some unselfish action, 
which will produce an effect for them in the world 
of Devakan, or the higher heaven, the intensity 
and duration of which will be always proportion- 
ate to their cause and which will make for them 
a season of joy and of realization a thousand- 
fold exceeding their deserts. If they have had 
but one moment of ideality, this single moment 
will bear its fruits ; this one note sounded on the 
lyre of life will be reproduced and will resound 
in prolonged harmony. The Devakanic state is, 
indeed, that realm where all our aimless aspira- 
tions come to fruition, our fallen hopes are real- 
ized and the dreams of our objective life become 
realities. The soul in this state enjoys a bliss 
beyond anything of which we can conceive; nor 
is there any disappointment possible, for the 
heaven of each one is his own creation, the work 
of his own aspirations and therefore exactly 
adapted to his capacities and capable of ful- 
filling his every wish. 



g6 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

But just as the physical life may be divided 
into periods, so the Devakanic state has its 
periods of increase, of intensity, then of gradual 
exhaustion, and after this, a time of entire ob- 
livion — not death — followed by a new incarna- 
tion or physical rebirth. 

And this cycle is repeated from the beginning 
to the end of a Manvantara. 

Born again into a new personality we recom- 
mence work, creating new causes, which will lead 
to new effects and these in their turn will be as- 
similated and harvested in a future Devakanic 
state. 

"He, therefore," remarks an Adept, "who, by 
means of a long succession of incarnations and 
reincarnations, reaches, at last, the end of the 
chain of births and becomes a Buddha, or he 
who has attained to this happy state by a path 
which is well understood, and which puts him in 
possession of the complete development of his 
psychic faculties — this one has arrived at full 
knowledge; and in one of these births, the one 
that precedes the Great Victory, he will be able 
to contemplate all his past lives, as they unroll 
themselves before his eyes like a vast panorama, 
giving him the spectacle of the varied and 
diverse scenes that they caused to exist." 



THE LAW OF KARMA 97 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LAW OF KARMA 

Sir Isaac Newton, in formulating his first Law 
of Movement, gave expression to one of the 
modes of Karma on the physical plane when he 
said: "Action and reaction are equal and oppo- 
site in direction." Science proclaims the law of 
cause and effect. Logic proceeds from the prin- 
ciple that consequences are true to their ante- 
cedents. Mill says: "Invariability of succession 
is found by observation to obtain between every 
fact in Nature and some other fact which has 
preceded it." All of our common experience 
teaches us to act according to our own estimate 
of the consequences to follow ; we work or rest, 
indulge ourselves or make sacrifices, scheme and 
plan, eat and drink, for the most part with regard 
to the effects of our activities upon our life as a 
whole. Thus do we observe the law of Karma 
on the physical plane and in the realm of thought. 

Despite this universal acceptance by individuals 



98 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

of the law of cause and effect as it applies to their 
personal affairs, the religions of Christendom 
have failed to recognize it as a moral principle. 
All great teachers have proclaimed, as with one 
voice, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
also reap." This principle is distinctly set forth 
in the scriptures of all ages. Still, many Christ- 
ians seek an escape for the sinner, by which his 
"reaction" will not be "equal and opposite in di- 
rection" to his action. Others, with greater 
courage and sincerity, recognize the law of com- 
pensation in the visible world and seek the prin- 
ciple of eternal and universal retributive justice, 
securing to every man the exact reward of his 
deeds, a principle which shall repair all human 
wrongs, make always for readjustment, and tend 
to equilibrium in the physical and harmony in 
the moral world. This ideal of justice, which 
has thus far failed of intelligible expression in 
the religious teachings of the western world, is 
fully recognized in the Orient as the law of 
Karma. 

To those who believe that we have but this 
one life, in which each must work out the sal- 
vation of his own soul, there is great inequality 
in the distribution of Nature's benefits. Some 



THE LAW OF KARMA 99 

men are born poor and others rich, some are in- 
telligent and others are imbecile, some live many 
years and others but a few moments. The 
justice of God can not be seen by him whose life 
is one long agony resulting from no fault of his 
own in this existence. The heart of the "good 
man," who knows no other teaching, aches for 
these tortured souls, and sometimes he turns 
away perforce from all religions, an atheist or 
an agnostic. 

The law of Karma on the other hand discloses 
a God of strict justice, meting out to every man 
what he has himself earned and has created in the 
realm of cause and effect. But it shows also a 
God of love and mercy, offering numberless 
opportunities to triumph over the lower nature. 
Many lives are necessary to accomplish so great 
a task, and the soul passes through a countless 
series of incarnations, to gain self-knowledge and 
self-mastery. Those who will not learn from 
gentleness must learn from pain. One single 
thought or aspiration toward the good, one un- 
selfish, pure desire in the whole life assures the 
soul another opportunity. Even the weakest son 
of the Great Father has time and occasion to learn 
the lessons which his stronger brother has per- 



IOO FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

haps mastered in a few incarnations. Those who 
fail are not condemned. The God of justice is 
also a God of infinite patience, and gives to every 
soul the opportunity to try again and again until 
every difficulty is surmounted and every weakness 
strengthened. The God of love wills that every 
soul shall be saved. Under this dispensation of 
mercy not one can go astray. 

All religions agree that the soul of man is 
accountable for its actions. It is this sense of 
responsibility that separates man from the lower 
creations ; it is the supreme mark of his divinity. 
Karma and Reincarnation are the bases upon 
which all true religion rests — Karma showing 
man courageously encountering his weaknesses, 
time after time, until he learns to master them 
and to know himself; Reincarnation providing 
him with the means to this arduous but glorious 
achievement. 

Karma recompenses and chastises with abso- 
lute impartiality. It respects no personality, and 
its action may not be modified even by means of 
prayers. The same wondrous order that describes 
in the heavens the distinct yet interdependent 
ellipses of the planets prevails also in the moral 
world. Every life expresses that quality to 



THE LAW OF KARMA 101 

which the individual has earned a right by work 
done and by victories gained in a past incar- 
nation. 

Man comes to earth with a three-fold personal 
Karma. First, there is his mass of unpaid debt, 
accumulated from the experiences of all his past 
lives. While much of this has been liquidated 
during his various incarnations, a balance re- 
mains that he has not yet been able to discharge. 
This, in the Sanscrit, is called Samchita. As this 
balance is the result of more than one past life, it 
may be too heavy and complicated to be laid upon 
the debtor's shoulders at one time, or in one life ; 
therefore in the second place the Lords of Karma, 
the Masters who aid in the administration of the 
law, select from his liabilities a portion of his 
past Karma, with which he is to begin a new life. 
This is called Prarabdha, or the destiny of his 
present incarnation. Third, there is the new 
Karma, the new combination he is to make, called 
Kriamana. Over Samchita and Prarabdha the 
man has no control. In the past they were his 
own creation, since he made the causes of which 
they are the effects. Now he can work only in 
the third field, by accepting the old conditions 
and making from them a new future. 



102 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

Man in the hands of Karma is like a child in 
the home of its parents. Food and clothing, 
opportunities for instruction, all are freely. and 
lovingly provided; but not the wisest of fathers 
or the tenderest of mothers can say to what use 
their child will put these advantages. They can- 
not grow for him or learn for him. His future 
is in his own hands, and for it he is responsible. 
Even his very presence in that family is due to 
causes which he set up in the long past, for we 
are born of the parents who can provide us with 
the opportunity to follow out some unsatisfied 
desire of long ago, to develop some trait of char- 
acter, or to gratify some ambition. 

The purpose of life is progress, not pleasure. 
He who believes that the chief object of life here 
and hereafter is happiness concentrates all his 
energies on the pursuit of some desire or aspira- 
tion which he expects will bring him pleasure. 
His concept of heaven is usually a state of bliss- 
ful enjoyment for himself and his loved ones, 
with a selfish disregard for the tortures of others. 
On the other hand he who knows the law of Re- 
incarnation thinks lightly of present pleasure or 
enjoyment, but is intent rather upon the prepara- 
tion of a better future in another incarnation. 



THE LAW OF KARMA IO3 

To this end he suffers humbly and without com- 
plaint the bufferings of fortune, recognizing in 
these present untoward circumstances the work- 
ing of the law. For him life holds no chance hap- 
penings. He knows that destiny demands that he 
develop along particular lines and that Karma 
provides him with the necessary experiences and 
places him in a certain family, nation, and race, 
according to the requirements of his awakening 
nature. At some stages of his growth pain is his 
most effective teacher; therefore he gratefully 
accepts a life of struggle and suffering, the con- 
flict being always between the spiritual self who 
knows and is striving upward toward freedom, 
and the astral or kamic nature which desires to 
enjoy. 

If man rightly understood the meaning of this 
life and its purpose he would welcome many per- 
sons and experiences that he now puts away 
from him as unpleasant and wearisome. From 
this point of view it is not the one who comes to 
us with a smiling face and gracious words who 
is in reality our friend, but rather the one who 
does not hesitate to tell us an unpalatable truth, 
who gives us pain, who is a constant thorn in 
our side, who is perhaps even malicious or hostile. 



104 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

For such an one r though uncongenial, even 
impossible, is more useful than the one who is 
always gentle. Every time we are able to turn 
aside one of his intended thrusts with some lov- 
ing word he gives us the opportunity to pay an 
old debt. It was for this reason that the Lord 
Issa, and all the other Adepts before him, en- 
joined upon their disciples to love their enemies. 
For love alone can triumph over the law of 
Karma and loose its bonds. 

Life on one plane is death on another. The 
struggle between the higher and lower natures 
of man continues throughout all his earth lives. 
When he attains to peace man will have become 
divine and will reincarnate no more. 

A man who is at the head of a large organiza- 
tion comes in direct contact with many thousands 
of people. Every such touch, however slight, is 
not only the result of some cause in the past of 
each man, but is also the beginning of a new 
activity. Each one attracted into the organization 
is the better or the worse for the encounter. These 
lives have flowed into the central stream because 
of the general trend of individual ideas and the 
particular Karmic ties and debts which each has 
made in some former life. It is not by chance 



THE LAW OF KARMA IOS 

that we choose, or think we choose, the men to 
serve us or to work with us. The universal law 
brings to us those who belong to our work or to 
us personally, or to some one associated with us. 
Karma adjusts every detail of our daily life. 
Man is, it is true, master of these conditions ; he 
can take or refuse those who are sent to him ; he 
can work with or against the law of Karma, and 
thus shorten or prolong the time of his earthly 
ordeal; — but he cannot escape until he has paid 
the uttermost farthing of his debt. This is the 
law. Nor does the wise man desire to be freed 
until he has fully atoned for every evil action 
and thought. 

For the most part man works in his ignorance 
against the law and for ages he is forced to re- 
incarnate again and again, so that the strands 
of his tangled web may be patiently unraveled 
and rewoven into the Great Plan. To the onlooker 
the mass of threads lying before the weaver are 
hopelessly confused. It would appear that they 
could never take their place in a pattern. To the 
weaver, however, each strand is in its right place, 
and for each he has a use. The ordinary man 
cannot see, through the apparent complications 
of life, the working out of a plan, but those with 



I06 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

a clearer understanding of the law are content 
to let the Great Weaver work out his pattern and 
use them as his threads, in whatever way may be 
best. They are not anxious about the apparent 
confusion among the threads which have not yet 
been woven into the fabric. They trust and wait. 
The law which governs in the world of affairs 
controls us in our social ties. Not one of these 
is idly formed, however ignorant we may be of 
the force which brings us together. You love 
some one with all the strength of your soul. 
Why? Because you have known this one before ; 
he possesses certain qualities of attraction which 
bind your soul to his. He also loves you, and 
for the moment you are happy. But he may sud- 
denly turn from you and say that he loves you 
no more. Then you feel that you are the most 
unhappy of beings. You are in despair. Yet this 
is just the moment when your future happiness 
is being prepared out of this very debt of suffer- 
ing which you are paying. For pain comes to us 
to lead to better things, and the more we suffer 
the more quickly we progress, for what is past 
will never come again. He who is wise will even 
rejoice instead of regretting the breaking of a 
bond of love, for he will know that this separa- 
tion severs one more of the ties that hold him to 



THE LAW OF KARMA 107 

earth. Every personal association by which we 
unite our life to that of another interweaves with 
our own the strands of his Karmic responsibili- 
ties and increases our sufferings and our difficulty 
in eventually loosing ourselves from them. All 
love that depends upon the bodily presence of the 
loved one, every smile and word of affection 
sent out without a profound knowledge of the 
higher law, will be the cause of tears and suffer- 
ing. Blessed is the Adept, who, loving all hu- 
manity, feeling for the sorrows of all, is freed 
from the plane of Maya. All must traverse this 
vale of woe, must live again and again according 
to the attachments formed in each incarnation, 
and until all of these Karmic debts are paid, we 
can not come to the end of our incarnations. 

If the individual is thus the center of a tangle 
of cross threads of other lives, knotted with his 
own beyond the power of loosing, how much 
more intricate becomes the problem when we con- 
sider that the law affects humanity in groups, the 
city, the state, the country, the race, the planet? 
Each one of these groups, great or small, has its 
rope of many strands to weave into the Great Plan, 
and each as an individual is evolving through 
struggles, failures and victories — Karma. Con- 



108 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

sider the city as a type of the group, under the 
influence of this law. It is an individual, a being, 
a growing developing entity, with a Karmic his- 
tory, comprising the sum-total of the good and 
evil traits of its past inhabitants. It is a mass of 
unfinished business, unrealized ideals, unsatisfied 
ambitions. It includes the Karma of the first 
man, the man who founded it, and that of all 
who have ever lived in it, of all those who have 
ever touched it in any manner or degree. And 
with this confused mass the city deals, day by 
day, and year by year, working off the old and 
creating new Karma, corresponding in nature to 
the purity or the corruption of its administration. 
Each member of the community bears his share 
of the burden. Although he may avoid office, 
he cannot escape the Karma of his city, and his 
future is appreciably influenced by every move 
made by those in authority as well as by every 
dweller, however humble his role. 

The law works in precisely the same manner 
in the evolution of the larger organizations of 
men, the greater groups, the wider spheres of 
human activity. There is no place in all the field 
of man's endeavor, in all the realm of physical 
or moral existence, where the Karma of the 



THE LAW OF KARMA 109 

whole is not influenced by that of the individual. 

Christ suggested the infinite scope of this law 
when he said, "Are not five sparrows sold for 
two farthings ? and not one of them is forgotten 
before God." 

How inspiring is the knowledge that not even 
the weakest aspiration of the most rebellious 
soul, struggling upwards to the light, is lost, 
and that every cause must have its effect, not 
only in the life of the individual but of the race, 
the planet, the universe ! A good thought sounds 
and resounds in the Akasha throughout eternity. 
Nothing can be lost, for the law of Karma 
gathers up the fragments of all energies. 

This vital connection between every living 
being and the Creator, between the humblest 
and the most exalted of men, between all parts 
of the universe, presents yet another aspect when 
we come to consider the motives of men and to 
take account of all the emotions, desires, inher- 
ited tendencies and habits of thought which lead 
to any action. We must see that even the sim- 
plest movement may bear many interpretations 
and may lead to various and opposite Karmic re- 
sults. For the nature of the effect will depend 
upon the motive. For example : An alarm of fire 



IIO FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

is heard and three men start to run at full speed 
to the scene; each man is making Karma by his 
action, but the kind of Karma he makes, and 
the effects to which it will give rise in the future, 
depend upon various causes, chiefly his motive in 
hastening to the fire. Suppose that the first 
man is actuated solely by curiosity and an excit- 
able temperament and that he merely watches the 
progress of the fire with the rest of the crowd: 
he will receive both immediately and later the 
due effect of his deed; he will have accentuated 
his propensities both as to curiosity and excita- 
bility, and attracted towards himself the danger- 
ous fire elemental. Suppose that the second man 
runs because he is afraid a friend is in danger, 
but when he arrives at the scene he is too para- 
lyzed with fear to be of service, and does nothing 
to help ; his Karma will be better than that made 
by the first, because he is moved by love, or at 
least by interest in his neighbor ; still, the results 
will not be wholly good, for an opportunity is 
afforded him to serve and through his former 
habits of fear-thought and lack of control over 
his emotions he is unable to take advantage of it. 
But suppose the third man, knowing that a cool 
head and an unflinching courage are needed, has- 



THE LAW OF KARMA III 

tens to the spot and unknown, unsolicited, un- 
noticed, lends a hand wherever it is required, and 
when the danger is over retires, unthanked, with- 
out even measuring his own service in his 
thoughts; this man will make good Karma, for 
without thought of reward he is moved by pure 
love of his fellow, and of the universal life. 

We cannot know how long it will be, as men 
count years, before the results of our present ac- 
tivities are seen. Only unimportant causes have 
immediate effects. The more far reaching the 
idea the longer it will be in realization, for its 
sphere of influence covers a larger field. The 
wing of an army is easier to manoeuver than the 
main body, while a single regiment is easier still 
of management. But we do know that day by 
day, in every act of our lives, especially in every 
motive, thought and feeling, our new Karma 
grows on the one hand as we touch other lives, 
and dwindles on the other hand as we learn the 
lessons presented to us and are able to render 
good for evil. At the end of life the sum of all 
the causes left over is laid by in store. These 
causes are assimilated in the long sleep that fol- 
lows active life in the world. The lesser tangles 
and loose ends are smoothed and straightened and 



112 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

the weak places are strengthened, so that, in 
the next incarnation, the soul comes forth, justly 
clothed in a garment woven from a stuff of its 
own making. All those desires that remained 
unsatisfied in the past life of the man become 
causes in his new life ; his past ideals become his 
present circumstances; his former tendencies 
have endowed him with qualities; the ambitions 
he pursued without success in his previous in- 
carnation he can now attain. It is as if he were 
a boy again and, having slept over night, goes 
on his way to school in the morning, refreshed 
and recruited, to take up all his activities from 
the place where he left them the day before, hav- 
ing grown and advanced toward maturity during 
the night. 

Is there no way to escape? Are we to be 
forever bound upon the wheel of Karma? Does 
every life see us paying off old debts only to 
make as many new ones? There is the same 
escape for the race that there is for the school 
boy. So long as the boy is in the lower classes 
he must remain subject to the discipline of the 
school ; but when he has graduated, having passed 
through all the experiences and learned all the 
lessons which school life affords, he is then 
freed from its laws, he is no longer bound be- 



THE LAW OF KARMA II3 

cause he has transcended them and his obedience 
is not only ready and willing, but it is also in- 
telligent. So the man who lives in the world but 
not of it, who works ardently yet without looking 
for personal gain, who loves and serves all men 
irrespective of what they may do or say to him, 
this one is free from Karma. He has graduated 
from the school of life. 

Those who recognize the law of Karma con- 
sciously build up their own immortality from 
day to day and from life to life. They purify 
every thought and action, knowing that upon 
them is based their own destiny. They learn to 
act for the good of all, regardless of the reac- 
tion. They rise above the operation of the law 
of Karma, and, transcending cause and effect, 
build, not only their own immortality, but the 
destiny of the planet. 

As a stone, cast into a calm lake, causes ripples 
to spread in ever widening circles until at last 
the whole surface is moved, so is the influence of 
one strong life — nay, of one pure thought! 

In the Vedas we read: 

"Sow a thought and reap an action ; 
Sow an action and reap a habit ; 
Sow a habit and reap character; 
Sow character and reap a destiny !" 



114 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 



CHAPTER IX. 

"Learn above all to separate head-learn- 
ing from Soul Wisdom, the "Eye" from 
the "Heart" doctrine . . . The doctrine 
of the eye is for the crowd; the doctrine 
of the heart for the elect" 

—VOICE OF THE SILENCE. 

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 

At this moment, when the fate of the race 
stands trembling upon the threshold of the New- 
Era, it becomes necessary, above all things, to 
point out clearly to the disciple the path to fol- 
low, and to give forth in plain language the main 
principles and methods by which the awakening 
soul may be guided. 

"Fiat Lux," Let there be Light, is the cry of 
the New Era, — light upon our social problems, 
light for our intellectual upliftment, but, above 
all, let the light shine forth from the spiritual 
nature of man ! 

And the dawn is with us. The barriers that 
have hitherto shut us in, and separated us from 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER II5 

the world of the invisible, are already down, as 
anyone who enters the field of psychic science 
may see. It is now plain that man can receive 
impressions by other and more subtle means than 
through the physical senses — Thought-transfer- 
ence has proved it again and again. A new 
world is open to the man who wills, and throngs 
are stepping forward over the threshold. 

To all such we say, "Pause," for there are, as 
ever, two paths opening before the aspirant : the 
broad and pleasant way, strewn with the beauti- 
ful flowers of phenomena sought for their own 
sake, and fed by streams of flattery and adulation ; 
and the steep and narrow path, whose thorns 
tear the feet of the disciple, and whose waters 
are ofttimes bitter to the taste. The broad way 
is full of brilliant promises to the one who is 
looking for ease, for greatness, for powers, or for 
any of the good things of life ; while the narrow 
path makes no such appeal; it is rugged and 
arduous. And these two paths will present them- 
selves before the seeker continually, until he shall 
have made his final choice of one or the other; 
therefore it is that we say "Pause, and consider I" 
The narrow path demands the exercise of Will, 
Self-Sacrifice and Constancy ; but he who follows 



Il6 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

it is more than repaid, for its discipline develops 
the dormant faculties of the real man, and enables 
him to learn at the fountain-head the secrets of 
Nature. It alone leads to the goal ; the pleasant 
path leads nowhere ! 

The instructions of the Order of the Initiates 
of Thibet take the disciple by the hand from the 
very place where he finds himself — -whether 
he be in distress and doubt, or whether he has 
already reached the higher plane of faith and 
certainty. They show him the plan of his life 
and a reason for his experiences, and they teach 
him how to choose safely for himself among the 
varied inducements held out to him on all sides. 
The Guru, or Instructor, knows that all true 
advancement is to be attained by the evolving of 
the innate qualities of the disciple, and not by 
the amount of knowledge imbibed ; he, therefore, 
allows every soul to learn its own lesson in the 
way it chooses, and when some apparently take 
a downward path for a time, he does not make 
any attempt to hold them; for their very down- 
ward trend shows him that they have yet back 
work to make up, qualities to evolve, Karma to 
work off, before they can continue the ascent. 
Occult Science prefers to educate (E'duco) 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER II7 

to bring forth out of man that which sleeps with- 
in, rather than to instruct; and to this end he is 
left free to receive or to reject, to eat or to go 
hungry. If he is sceptical and refuses to receive 
a truth, or if he is careless and allows a teaching 
to pass by him unnoticed, the Guru remains silent, 
well aware that whatever the disciple is ready to 
accept, he will recognize and appropriate, while 
no amount of argument, explanation or demon- 
stration will enable him to recognize what he is 
unable to receive. 

Nor is the instruction delivered as a science 
already-made, which the student has but to learn 
by heart; Esoterism is not the same for any two 
persons, for it consists in evolving the peculiar 
virtue of each one and thus awakening the in- 
dividual soul. The Master leaves the student 
free to do his own thinking. One day, for ex- 
ample, he will give a demonstration of the dis- 
integration and reintegration of matter, or of the 
power of the "vril." These will arouse the at- 
tention and thought of the disciple if he is hum- 
ble, or will stir his curiosity and perhaps stimu- 
late his doubt and criticism if he has not yet 
learned humility. In any case they will arrest 
his attention and set him thinking, and therefore 



Il8 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

growing. Then, some other day, after allowing 
a short interval for the germination of the seed 
sown, the Guru will present the scientific principle 
back of cohesion and of force; and if the dis- 
ciple is alert and intelligent he will make his own 
connection between the principle of to-day and 
the earlier demonstration, and this one realiza- 
tion will open his eyes to a whole field of thought, 
and will explain many other phenomena of the 
same nature as those presented. If however he 
is one of those persons who "know it all," this 
attitude of his will at once shut the door to all 
progress in any school whatever. Argument, 
doubt and discussion are also deadly foes to 
spiritual advancement. 

The Guru is so far in advance of those whom 
he instructs, that his disciples, who are called 
Lanus and afterwards Chelas, revere him and 
yield him a willing and glad obedience, as to a 
superior being. This attitude of humility on the 
part of the one who learns is very favorable to 
the reception of high spiritual teaching. When, 
on the other hand, there is no such vast difference 
to be seen in the spiritual attainment of teacher 
and taught, when all are living the same life, all 
equally intent upon their own aims and ambitions, 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER II9 

all seeking after happiness here and hereafter, 
and living with regard to what can be enjoyed 
on this plane, — the layman, who sees that his 
pastor is not so very far in advance of himself, 
has not that deep reverence for his teachings that 
he should have. He is even ready, at the first 
opportunity, to criticise the actions of his supe- 
rior, and thus he closes his own door to progress ; 
for the spirit of criticism or judgment is inimical 
to all true advancement. Every Great Teacher 
has emphasized this truth: "Judge not!" "Who 
art thou that judgest another ?" "Be ye there- 
fore as little children," we read in our own 
Scriptures; and the same spirit is to be found 
throughout all the Sacred Books of the Orient. 
The Guru has passed through all the grades 
of earth's school and graduated. He has learned 
far in advance of those about him the lore of 
Nature and material forces. Nor is his wisdom 
limited to this planet, for, in his flights through 
space, he has investigated, at first hand, the con- 
ditions of life in other worlds, so that the Solar 
System, its laws, conditions and destiny, hold no 
mystery for him. He has raised himself by a 
determined and systematic line of effort, carried 
on through many lives, from the lower ground 



120 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

on which the Chela stands, step by step to his 
present opportunity to serve; and this height, 
this difference of attainment, is recognized and 
revered. Every word of such a teacher is treas- 
ured, his every wish is sacred, while to minister 
to his material welfare is a privilege eagerly 
sought for and embraced; for the Guru is felt 
by the disciple to be the open door between the 
world and God, between his own soul and the 
Divine, inasmuch as he enters at will the invisible 
world of spirit and is in immediate touch with the 
Great Masters of Wisdom and Compassion, those 
who show forth the Divine Presence and declare 
God's Will. 

The instruction given in our Centers in the 
Occident takes a line between these two extremes ; 
for, although our Western teachers, who conduct 
the work of the Members, are not Gurus, and do 
not therefore excite the same feeling of venera- 
tion toward themselves, yet they are provided 
with the teachings of the Order in writing, and 
are, at times, supported by a Guru, or even by a 
Great Master in person. Being thus upheld and 
fed with the Water of Life direct from its Source, 
our Centers attract to themselves those strong 
souls in the world who belong to the particular 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 121 

work which the New Era is bringing, and form 
them into a band of brotherhood which is reach- 
ing around the world. 

The Order of the Initiates of Thibet teaches 
that the object of all existence is to know and 
love God, and the method of attaining to such 
knowledge is by service. Silently and secretly 
the disciple is bidden to sacrifice himself and to 
serve his fellow-man — his energies being at all 
times directed towards a single aim, "the ad- 
vancement of the Holy Cause of Eternal Truth." 

Will is the first of powers. Will supplies the 
initial vibration which makes possible any act of 
creation. The cultivation of the Will is therefore 
of prime importance to the disciple and he is 
taught to lose no single opportunity that his outer 
life ofifers of stimulating its activity. By means 
of the Will, man can steer a straight path through 
all the difficulties which beset him in the world, 
neither stumbling nor turning aside even when 
confronted by problems which are apparently im- 
possible of solution. He uses the power which 
he has at his disposal today upon the unpleasant- 
nesses and the obstacles of today, obliging him- 
self to serve when he would rather rule, to work 
when he would rather play, to love when he would 



122 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

sooner hate. And by these small victories his 
Will is strengthened and he is able to meet the 
trials of tomorrow. 

There are two ways of living, the one creative 
and the other productive, the one synthetic and 
the other analytical. Both of these aspects are 
good and each has its place in the life of the 
disciple. Creation is however first and must be 
always predominant: he must be first of all and 
above everything else a creator, for this is his 
birthright. It is to this end that he has so lately 
been endowed with the higher faculties of reason 
and memory, imagination, intuition and percep- 
tion. The Will acts upon all these faculties; it 
supplies the initial vibration, and as man learns 
to use this power and direct it on to the higher 
planes, he brings forth from the realms of the 
unknown, not material children in his own physi- 
cal image, but children of his higher nature. 

In all the teachings of the Order which are 
given out along the lines of generation, the at- 
tention of the disciple is always fixed on the 
higher intellectual and spiritual planes; the in- 
struction is given by means of symbols and the 
mind is never allowed to fall to the material 
plane, this being accounted as the grossest and 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 123 

least important manifestation of a sacred truth. 
The Great Initiates teach us that all evolution, 
whether physical, psychic, mental or spiritual is 
effected through generation ; and when this truth 
is recognized, the morality resulting from its true 
appreciation will be seen to be something infi- 
nitely more than a matter of convention only; it 
is the expression in life of a principle which re- 
quires the correlation of all planes in "universal 
equilibrium, which must be ever harmonious and 
perfect." 

Equilibrium in nature is the point towards 
which all forces tend. A cup of hot water set 
in a room of moderate temperature will radiate 
its heat until the water reaches the mean tem- 
perature of the air about it. A pendulum, if 
disturbed and set swaying will continue to vibrate 
to and fro as long as the force of the impul- 
sion lasts, but each outswing will be less than the 
one before it until at last it comes to rest. Thus 
the forces of the Universe come forth into mani- 
festation, from One issue Two or Duality; these 
two separate, opposite each other, then gradually 
return to that Unity and equilibrium from which 
they came forth. Since this is the perpetual law 
of the Universe, the man who understands it and 



124 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

holds himself at the center, can make use of all 
obstacles and opposing forces and cause them to 
serve his own purposes, while he remains ever 
poised, calm and concentrated. We see this 
power of poise in all great leaders of men and 
in those who hold in their hands the safety and 
welfare of thousands. In the life of the disciple, 
especially, poise is an outward sign of advance- 
ment. It is not always the eloquent speaker or 
the brilliant writer who is the Great Soul, but the 
one who is calm and poised at critical moments. 
When we observe a man serene in all great 
crises and at the same time active in serving 
others, who is always at his best in a moment of 
danger, and whose equilibrium is never disturbed 
by any of the so-called accidents of life — then we 
know that this one is stayed upon some power 
greater than the common. 

We have known occasions, however, when an 
apparent equilibrium and self-control have been 
due to weakness rather than strength. A man 
has been known to receive the news of complete 
financial ruin and make no sign of suffering; 
another will see his home broken up through 
some calamity over which he has no control, and 
though his happiness is destroyed, yet he may re- 
main unmoved. 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 125 

But this immobility is not necessarily a sign of 
strength; it may result from apathy or inertia. 
True poise includes something more than an out- 
ward calm, something higher than stolid indiffer- 
ence ; it rests upon an inner activity and power to 
reconstruct, and the disciple will always show, in 
addition to a serene bearing, a great activity in 
serving his fellow and the power to rebuild what 
disaster has torn down. This creative power of 
reconstruction is one of the marks of greatness 
in any of the walks of life. Take, for example, 
the characteristics and the exigencies of the life 
of some man whose profession places him in a 
position of great responsibility. This creative 
power of which we are speaking, is of the first 
importance, for instance, to the Captain of an 
Ocean-liner, for, at a moment's notice he may be 
called upon to face the direst peril — not to him- 
self and his own life alone, but to the thousands 
whose lives, at that instant, touch his own, both 
those on land and those about him on sea. If 
we have ever observed the Captain at such a 
moment of danger, we have found him quick, 
resourceful, energetic in command, but calm al- 
most to apparent indifference — caring for each 
one on the ship individually, as well as collect- 



126 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

ively, but at the same time keenly alive to every 
favoring circumstance of wind and wave, and able 
to take advantage of these in his efforts to save 
the boat. This is not the calmness of indiffer- 
ence although outwardly it resembles it, nor is it 
a want of sympathy, but it is the poise of attain- 
ment — the result of a life well-spent; it is not 
the outcome of a moment's emotion but the 
natural culmination of a long series of efforts 
through many lives. 

And this supreme moment, which to the ordi- 
nary man may come but once or twice in a life- 
time, is a constant quantity in the life of the dis- 
ciple. This quality which we have seen displayed 
in the Captain at a time of great strain, is the 
faculty that the disciple is required to cultivate 
and use at every moment. The Will of the dis- 
ciple must be ever on the alert, strong enough and 
quick enough to meet any emergency however 
overwhelming or sudden, and every minute of 
his life must be to him like the moment of danger 
was to the Captain — a focussing point of the 
whole of his activities, bringing up to his assist- 
ance all the knowledge and wisdom he has made 
his own during the whole of his present and 
former lives. The true disciple lives at this 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I27 

high state of tension, each moment is to him of 
value, upon every situation, however trivial, he 
brings to bear all the forces born of past ex- 
periences, and having but one aim — the service 
of God and of his fellow-man — he is always at 
peace. 

Esoterism is very difficult. Its demands upon 
the disciple are imperative, dominant and all- 
embracing. It requires of him not alone intel- 
lectual study, but a changed life ; not alone moral- 
ity, but spirituality. 

In the "Voice of the Silence," as we quoted at 
the head of our chapter, the disciple is bidden to 
choose the doctrine of the "heart" rather than 
the doctrine of the "eye." This has ever been 
the teaching of the Great Masters whom we fol- 
low. The doctrine of the heart is synthetic. 
All its energies are focused at the center and in 
the inner man. For this it cares first of all, be- 
cause it recognizes that at the center is the life. 
The doctrine of the eye, on the other hand is an- 
alytical ; it thinks much of the instruments through 
which the manifestation of life is made possible, 
and its attention is outward into the mazes of in- 
tellect and of phenomena. The teachings of our 
Order to students of the first degree have little 



128 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

to say concerning body and the outer man, but 
much about the inner fire of his Divine nature. 

The individual is often compared to a light- 
house, set up on a wild and rocky shore to light 
the forlorn and shipwrecked mariner. Every 
day the disciple feeds and trims his lamp, for 
the brilliancy of the central flame, the Divine 
Spark, is the one essential to the lighthouse, and 
the brighter it burns, the more useful the beacon. 
His first care and devotion are therefore given to 
the light itself and its dazzling clearness ; but he 
does not, on this account, neglect to brighten the 
reflectors and all the outer windows through 
which the light must shine. The more the energy 
of his being is concentrated in feeding the flame, 
the more surely will he purify his instruments 
and clear the outer channels, the windows of his 
lighthouse. He whose light burns pure will have 
clean windows. He, however, who concentrates 
his attention on the outer and makes his first 
consideration the purification of the outer en- 
velope, is meanwhile putting the main object of 
life, the awakening of the spirit, into the second 
place. 

We have dwelt for a moment here upon the 
principle of intellectualism and analysis which 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I29 

is not our own method, so that the disciple may 
well distinguish between the two schools. An- 
alysis is good in its place, but this is second and 
never first in the spiritual life. Synthesis, on 
the other hand, leads to concentration, and this 
again to creation; and so our own school lays a 
great stress upon the development of the creative 
power in man. While teaching the action and 
interaction of the positive and negative in nature, 
it always warns the disciple against falling into 
mechanical and negative habits of thought. It 
requires him to be always "up and doing." be- 
lieving that it is better to attempt and fail, than 
to remain inert and passive. He who would ad- 
vance must learn to concentrate his forces, and 
this he will not do by thinking, or by speaking, 
or by reading even, — but by action on the physi- 
cal plane and by concentration on the spiritual. 
In the early days of his awakening, reading and 
the hearing of lectures will fan the tiny flame; 
at that early stage, talking with those who are 
more advanced than himself will be of great serv- 
ice, and may hasten his development; but all of 
these things are scattering and dissipating to his 
own forces. They cause him to take in food 
from without, and spend his own strength in as- 



I30 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

similating it, and while this is a very necessary 
preparation for work, yet it is not work in it- 
self: if no fruit is born of that flower, then is 
that flower barren and useless. So, let the dis- 
ciple understand that, though reading and talk- 
ing and the hearing of lectures are all good, yet 
Silence is better; for in the Silence the Soul 
grows. 

In the awakening of the Soul and its after de- 
velopment, the teacher makes use, not only of in- 
struction both synthetic and analytical, of demon- 
stration and the enunciation of principle, but also 
of a still more powerful and vital method — dis- 
cipline. 

The disciple is not understood to know a thing 
until he has experienced it. He has not con- 
quered a fault, in the opinion of his teacher, until 
he has been tried in every possible part of his 
nature experimentally along that particular line. 
Thus the tests of the Order are not given in 
writing but in the blood of the heart. The stu- 
dent is not presented with a question upon some 
one of life's problems and required to put down 
on paper what he would do under given circum- 
stances; but, by the guidance of the Masters of 
the Order, the Karma of that soul is so grouped 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I3I 

as to bring him the very circumstances that will 
try to the uttermost his powers of choice. He 
will be led, step by step apparently without the 
intervention of any unusual agency, but never- 
theless under the invisible guidance of the 
Master, into situations where he must inevitably 
either fall or stand upright, and where he will 
learn a useful lesson in either case. If he falls 
he will learn to know his own weakness and will 
have opportunity of strengthening himself; if he 
is able to stand upright and to resist the tempta- 
tion, his victory will give him added energies to 
attempt and undertake the impossible in the 
future. For the Esoteric disciple is always re- 
quired to attempt the impossible and it is thus 
that he builds his immortality. The doing of the 
possible and the apparent is for the ordinary man ; 
but he who creates, who brings forward some 
form of activity which has until now been latent, 
and who is thereby a benefactor of the race, is 
always scaling impossible heights. 

As we have said, Esoterism is not an easy 
path, but it is the way that is opening out before 
a great many souls at the present time, and each 
one enters upon this path when his hour has 
struck. It is a path full of paradoxes for it looks 



132 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

at life from the standpoint of the soul, whereas 
the world in general always considers the person- 
ality. The discipline, and therefore the difficul- 
ties of esoterism all center about this point. The 
laws of the world refer to the outer life of the 
citizen, and decree what he shall or shall not do ; 
esoterism teaches what he must be and its laws 
all have to do with self-control and the use of 
the spiritual powers. Little is said of ordinary 
vices and faults of body, for it is understood that 
the aspirant is already an exemplary citizen ; but 
the greatest stringency is required to be exercised 
over the thoughts and desires of the lower man ; 
for he who enters upon this path and then per- 
mits himself to indulge in jealousy, or any form 
of hatred, is in danger of being torn to pieces by 
the very forces he invoked to his aid when he 
entered. And what is true of the individual is 
equally true of groups of men; so long as the 
aim is high and unselfish, and the thoughts pure, 
the group is strong and united; but as soon as 
the individuals begin to have selfish ideas of 
something to be gained for themselves as apart 
from the interests of the whole, they are on the 
downward path. Beware, O disciple, of separat- 
ing thyself, even for a moment, in thy thoughts 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I33 

' from the whole ; for from separate desire comes 
jealousy of those more favored, then dissatis- 
faction, intolerance and hatred with all its 
train will follow, and these will consume thy soul 
with fierce burning. When the candidate ap- 
proaches our Order for Initiation, he tears down, 
by that action a part of the wall which until now 
has shut out from him "the knowledge of good 
and evil," and while receiving the beneficent in- 
fluence of the good, he is also more open to the 
evil suggestions of less evolved entities. It be- 
hoves him therefore to fortify himself and watch 
carefully his thoughts and desires. Having 
entered one of our Centers, he will perhaps be 
offered his choice, in one way or another, between 
remunerative work for himself and less lucrative 
employment in serving the Order or the world. 
If he chooses work for the world, then will fol- 
low the temptation to personal self-seeking even 
in the work. He will be tried in every part of 
his nature, and observed under the tests by the 
Master who is guiding him; ambition will be 
presented to him in a very specious and subtle 
way; or it will be suggested to him that his aid 
is essential to the work and he will be tempted 
to pride; his prejudices will be stirred; his lower 



134 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

nature will constantly assert itself in favor of 
ease and comfort or of enjoyment, all for the 
sake of the work. Every day will bring its own 
problem, and unless he is very pure-hearted he 
will inevitably fall sometimes. The disciple, 
however, who has entered upon the path of eso- 
terism does not "stay fallen." He is no sooner 
down than he rises quickly to his feet, and with 
more care continues his way. Thus every fall is 
a step upwards. 

In the beginning of his discipleship, the prin- 
cipal discipline centers around the elimination of 
the personality, and the killing out of such faults 
as criticism and the others we have enumerated; 
but every day, month by month and year by year, 
the disciple becomes both freer and more tightly 
bound; for by one of those strange paradoxes 
which mark the esoteric life, the more freedom 
he attains from the bonds of his lower nature 
the more closely does he cling to the ties of his 
inner spiritual Self. Therefore the law by which 
he lives becomes daily more stringent as he is 
more exacting with himself; and what would 
have been a virtue and a great victory yesterday is 
today but an ordinary stepping-stone. The height 
which was before him last year is today behind 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I35 

his back and another height with still more 
glorious promise is ahead of him — and this is life. 

At this period Silence and Secrecy begin to be 
required, in order that by adding them to Sacri- 
fice, which he has already been practising, the 
Lanu may gather to a center his deeper and inner 
forces. We see this in nature, when the seed 
germinates in the darkness and the silence of the 
earth, undergoing changes of which it is little 
conscious. All this is secret. 

It is unfortunate that this word, with so pro- 
found a meaning, should have been used in re- 
cent years to cloak the baser designs of men, so 
that today, if anything is spoken of as being 
"secret" the ordinary person at once imagines 
something too shameful to bear the light. Thus 
secret societies are supposed to be banded to- 
gether for the protection of persons and things 
which are below the normal standard of morality 
in the world, instead of beyond and above, as in 
ancient times. There must always be secret 
things so long as men are not full-grown. So 
long as the race is still advancing, there will al- 
ways be inequalities of intellectual acquirement 
and of spiritual growth ; and every such inequal- 
ity involves a "secret." For example, two dear 



I36 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

friends may be most congenial and closely united, 
but however much they may wish to share every 
confidence, there will always be some subtler 
shades of meaning that each understands his own 
way, there will be some lines of thought along 
which the one knows that the other cannot fol- 
low him, there will be some ideals that one has 
but the other does not share, though he would. 
No two souls are alike, and the differences con- 
stitute the secrets of each one — the heights of 
their natures which are theirs alone — the depths 
into which no other soul can follow them. The 
real word "secret" is synonymous with "sacred," 
and this is the sense in which it is used in esoter- 
ism. And the "secrets" of Secret Societies may 
be, and sometimes are, of the same nature; for 
what is true of the individual is true of the com- 
munity. Those persons who are more nearly 
alike in ideals or in habits of thought will come 
together into a group, and many things that 
they know and do, will, of necessity, be secrets 
from another group of persons with different 
ideals, just as the ideals of this second group will 
be secrets from the first group ; not because either 
one of these is engaged in any operations of a 
doubtful nature, but simply that they look at life 



METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I37 

from a side which the others could not, if they 
would, understand. 

Esoterism, as we explained in our first chapter, 
is, above all things, secret. It appeals to the 
deeps and the heights whence the soul cries out 
to the "Father who seeth in secret." Every 
heart has a sacred place which is open to God 
alone. This is the place of the Silence in his own 
soul, and from it will issue both sacrifice and 
willing service ; for it is at once the dwelling of 
the disciple and of the Most High. All service 
to be truly acceptable must be both secret and 
sacrificial, just as sacrifice must be in secret, and 
as silence must bind all three in one whole. 

S stands for Esoterism; it also symbolizes the 
three duties of the disciple : Sacrifice, Silence and 
Service. This is why the serpent, or the letter 
S is so prominently displayed in all the insignia 
of Occult and Esoteric Orders. The Old Ser- 
pent, so well known to Bible students, is used in 
occultism to represent the Great Force latent 
throughout all nature which the disciple learns 
to use with more and more certainty and power 
as he advances from plane to plane of evolution. 
Very little in explanation of this force is given 
out to Members of the first degree, for whom this 



I38 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 

text-book is primarily written, this degree being, 
for their own safety, one of preparation, by the 
methods we have outlined, for the awakening of 
the higher powers. The soul of man evolves 
continually and for ever, and even the Adeptate, 
in which it reaches an exalted state of human 
evolution has its degrees of evolution. By labor- 
ious, personal discipline and by arduous work, 
often reaching through many incarnations, the 
Adept takes step after step, Initiation after In- 
itiation, and always he sees before him other 
steps leading towards Divinity. 

It has been said: "Speech is for Time, Silence 
for Eternity/' and truly the Silence surrounding 
these Great Souls is awful, and the Secrets which 
they hold but cannot yet communicate, give us, 
who sometimes catch a glimpse of their faces, 
some appreciation of the great gulf which still 
separates the race of today from the man that 
shall be. 

Will ! Be Able ! Dare ! and Keep Silence ! for 
To think is to create ! 



"HE WHO FEELS HIS HEAKT BEAT PEACEFULLY, 
HE SHALL HAVE PEACE." 




GENERAL PURPOSES 

i. To form a chain of Universal Brotherhood 
based upon the purest altruism, without 
distinction of race, creed, caste or color; 
in which reign tolerance, order, discipline, 
liberty, compassion and love. 

2. To study the Occult Sciences of the Orient, 

and to seek by meditation, concentration 
and a special line of conduct to develop 
those powers which are in man and his 
environment. 

3. To provide a practical philosophy of life, 

that shall aid man in meeting the problems 
and enduring the trials of life with forti- 
tude. 

4. The mainspring of the Center is Service. 



BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE TEACHINGS 

All the Centers under the direction of the 
Society have certain definite teachings and 
methods of development. Some of these are : 
i. The Universe is One, therefore all are united 
in Universal Brotherhood. 

2. The existence of a Supreme Deity. 

3. Man is a Spiritual Being and, as such, is 

responsible for his actions. 

PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPMENT 

1. The ascendancy of the Spiritual Man. 

2. The development of the individuality or soul 

nature. 

3. The entire submission of the personality, or 

man of emotions and desires, to the higher 
nature. 

4. The cultivation of the Will and its practice 

in the daily life, in harmony with the 
Divine Will. 

5. Non-Resistance, or the Law of Love. 

6. The realization of positive thought-force, and 

the rejection of the negative states of fear, 
doubt or morbidity. 

7. The strict accomplishment of all the duties 

of the daily life without any thought of 
reward, leaving the results to the Divine. 



LIBRARY 

The Society at Washington has a carefully se- 
lected Library of books, periodicals and pamph- 
lets relating to Oriental Philosophy and Ethics, 
Theosophy, Occultism, Psychical Research and 
allied subjects. These may be consulted free 
in the Reading Room, or borrowed upon pay- 
ment of a small rental. Books are loaned by 
mail to persons in any part of the world. 

There is also a Free Division, which loans books 
and pamphlets free by mail to inquirers; and 
a Sales Division which supplies all current 
books on these subjects. 

All receipts from the sale or loan of books are 
added to the Library Fund. 

For information respecting the Library, address 

THE LIBRARIAN, 

1443 Q Street N. W., Washington, D. C 



MAY 23 1910 



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